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UNDER C^SARS' SHADOW 




Frontispiece 



AUGUSTUS AS EMPEROR 



UNDER CESARS' 
SHADOW 



BY 
HENRY FRANCIS COLBY, D.D 



Illustrated 




THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

440 FOURTH A VENUE , NEW YORK 
MCMXVIII 



J 



<%■ 






Copyright, 1918, by 
The Neale Publishing Company 



NOV l( 

©CLA508265 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 9 

CHAPTER 

I Cesar Augustus 11 

II Tiberius : The Cesar of Christ's Ministry . . 49 

III Caligula, The Madcap 71 

IV Claudius, The Stolid 83 

V Nero, The Cruel 102 

Postscript 135 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing 
The Julian Family . . . . . . Half-Title 

Augustus as Emperor Frontispiece 

Facing page 
Julius Cesar 11 

Mark Antony 16 

Cicero 24 

Altar of Peace 37 

The Cryptoporticus 39 

Tiberius . . . .49 

Drusus 54 

Caligula 71 

Claudius 83 

Claudian Aqueduct 90 

Nero 102 

Agrippina II and Nero 112 

Popp^ea 115 

Seneca 121 

nomentana bridge 129 



PBEFACE 

Like ruler, like people! Kings and emperors 
are conspicuous specimens of the character of 
their times. They are centers around which re- 
volve the prevailing tastes and passions of men. 
They also influence and control the minds of their 
subjects. If we would know the spirit of any pe- 
riod of history, we need only to fix our gaze upon 
the individuals in power at that time. 

If we would ascertain, therefore, what sort of 
a world it was into which Jesus Christ came ; how 
impossible it was that He should be its natu- 
ral and merely human product; against what a 
dark background of selfishness and tyranny, im- 
morality, and vice His heavenly purity and self- 
sacrificing love shone forth; what cynical ma- 
terialism and infidel philosophy, what coarse sto- 
lidity and bitter malice He had to meet, and what 
hindrances and persecutions His cause, in the per- 
sons of His early followers, had to contend with, 
we cannot do better than to study the lives of the 
Boman emperors of the first century. This is the 
reason for presenting here some sketches of the 
careers of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, 
and Nero, and for asking what relics can still be 

9 



10 PREFACE 

found of their times and of their work. To con- 
template some material object that they respec- 
tively touched or planned or builded, — some hoary 
ruin or crumbling fragment of temple, palace, 
aqueduct, or sepulcher, — seems to bring us into 
closer relation with them and to make more real 
to us those great dramatic figures, which would 
otherwise be but dim shadows of the past. 

The illustrations in this volume are taken from 
photographs by Anderson, the unsurpassed pho- 
tographer so well known in Rome. 

H. F. C. 




Facing page 11 



JULIUS CAESAR 



UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 



CHAPTER I 

CiESAR AUGUSTUS 

We read in the second chapter of Luke's Gospel 
that "it came to pass in those days that there 
went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all 
the world should be enrolled. ' * The common ver- 
sion of the New Testament says, " taxed.' ' But 
the revised version, following more closely the 
original Greek, says, "enrolled." It was what we 
call at the present day a registration, made in or- 
der that none should escape the subsequent tax- 
ation. 

The sacred narrative continues. "All went to 
enroll themselves, every one to his own city." Dr. 
James Stalker remarks : 

"This does not seem a very thrilling fact with which to begin 
the Christmas story; it seems, even, prosaic. But when the stern 
emperor's edict went forth there was one young woman's heart 
which thrilled with the keenest dread. That was the heart of 
Mary of Nazareth, called of God to be the mother of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. It meant for her a long hard journey of eighty 
miles, in the winter season, over the mountains and along the 
roughest paths; it meant that she must suffer pain and privation 
when she was frail in body and anxious in mind, and all because 

11 



12 TJNDEK C^SAES* SHADOW 

she could not escape going to Bethlehem to be enrolled. For 
she and her husband Joseph were both direct descendants of 
Israel's best-beloved King, David, and must obey the law requir- 
ing people to go back to the city from which their family had 
first come and be enrolled and taxed there. So there was nothing 
for her but to set out on the difficult journey, this sweet and 
gentle maiden with her crown of supreme honor from God and 
her burden of human anxiety and pain. " 

We can imagine one subject of the conversa- 
tion between her and Joseph on the way. Their 
poverty and obscurity had hidden from public 
notice the fact of their lineage, so direct from 
David. But all the Jews were wont to preserve 
with great care everything pertaining to their 
genealogies, and it was especially the case with 
those whose certainty of Davidic descent gave 
them ground for hoping that the Messiah would 
appear in their own line. We may believe that 
Joseph took with him a copy of the official family 
records, those that Matthew and Luke have pre- 
served for us, and that he pleased himself and 
Mary along the toilsome way with the thought 
that now their specially honorable descent would 
have to be in some measure publicly recognized. 
Caesar Augustus himself had not so good a patent 
of nobility as had they. Although the dark 
shadow of that monarch was about to fall, by rea- 
son of this decree for enrollment, across the very 
beginning of the holy Child's life, they were after- 
ward to realize that God's providence had been 
leading them and had caused human government 
to become an involuntary agent for bringing about 



(LESAB AUGUSTUS 13 

the fulfillment of the prophecy that the Messiah 
should be born in Bethlehem. 

Now who was this Caesar Augustus, that is as- 
sumed to have had so great authority in the whole 
world that at his bidding a registration had to be 
taken in every part of it? He was no less than 
the first sole master of Rome's united empire, 
one of the most conspicuous figures in the history 
of the human race. 

He had ascended the throne as the climax of a 
series of very startling and tragic events. Julius 
Caesar, — that man so wonderful alike for military 
genius, political sagacity, and literary skill, to 
whom first the Roman Senate gave the imposing 
title of Imperator, and who, if he had lived longer, 
would probably have become all that this title 
later grew to mean, — had been assassinated by a 
group of conspirators at Rome in the year 44 be- 
fore the beginning of the Christian era. These 
assassins claimed that they were doing a great 
service to the state by delivering it from the 
schemes of so ambitious a man ; but none can deny 
that jealousy was among the motives that im- 
pelled them to commit the bloody deed, which 
took place in the building in the Campus Martius 
where the Senate that year convened, adjoining 
the Theater of Pompey, and we are told that it 
was at the feet of great Pompey 's statue that 
Caesar fell. Mark Antony, who had been his col- 
league in the consulship and in the control of the 
army, dramatically pronounced a funeral oration 



14 UNDER C^SARS' SHADOW 

after Caesar 's death from the rostra in the Forum 
and then endeavored to make himself the suc- 
cessor to Caesar's remarkable power and popu- 
larity. 

But just then a new and strong competitor for 
the military and political leadership appeared in 
the person of a young man only nineteen years of 
age, who is the subject of this sketch. 

The name of this young man was at that time 
Caius Octavius. He was the son of a Roman noble 
of the same name and of his wife Atia, — who was 
a niece of Julius Caesar. They lived in a modest 
home on the Palatine Hill. Caius Octavius was 
also Julius Caesar's adopted son, and had been 
chiefly educated under his provision and direction. 
Moreover, Caesar had designated him as his heir. 

Caius Octavius proposed, therefore, now to be- 
come the great dictator's successor and avenger. 
He assumed the longer name, Caius Julius Caesar 
Octavianus, and artfully secured, — first of all,— 
a pledge from a large part of the army to support 
and obey him. He found a great helper to his 
ambitions in the most distinguished statesman of 
that day, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Marcus 
Tullius Cicero also welcomed Octavianus to Rome, 
especially as he saw in this young aspirant a 
rival to Mark Antony, whom Cicero intensely 
hated. Indeed, that famous orator made exciting 
speeches against Mark Antony, which greatly im- 
paired the influence of that commander. 

Boon there was civil war. Octavian, as we may 



CLESAR AUGUSTUS 15 

now call him, was on one side, Mark Antony on 
the other. In two battles the latter was defeated. 
He barely escaped with his life ; and so Octavian 
now attained unto the superior authority, impos- 
ing his will upon the government and securing 
his proclamation as consul on the 22d of Septem- 
ber, forty-three years before Christ. 

Having reached this stage of success, Octavian 
began to plan the securing of the humiliation of 
Brutus and Cassius, who had taken part in the 
assassination of Julius Caesar, and who, with their 
comrades, called themselves "liberators," in view 
of their opposition to the concentration of power 
in one man. To rid himself of annoyance by them, 
Octavian needed all the help he could get. He 
now, therefore, took a most amazing step and one 
that betrayed his utter lack (at that time) of 
moral principle. He changed his attitude toward 
Mark Antony, conciliated his friendship, and ac- 
tually succeeded in forming an agreement with 
him and with another ambitious competitor named 
Lepidus, who had also been a prominent military 
officer. 

These three met together for three days on a 
small island in the river Ehenus, and there agreed 
to be a "triumvirate," as they called it, for the 
reconstitution of the commonwealth. This trium- 
virate, which was to last for five years, was a most 
high-handed conspiracy, — an insult to the dignity 
of the Roman senate, a violation of many previous 
professions and alliances, and a tyranny over the 



16 UNDER OESARS' SHADOW 

rights of private citizens. Three hundred sena- 
tors and two thousand knights were arbitrarily 
proscribed by the three usurpers of power. The 
estates of these victims were plundered and many 
of them were hunted to their deaths. 

Each one of the triumvirate in this arrangement 
sacrificed some one of his friends to please the 
others. Thus, Octavian himself outraged all feel- 
ings of honor and justice by allowing Marcus Tul- 
lius Cicero, whose influence and advocacy had done 
great things in his behalf, to be put to death. 
This was a concession to Mark Antony, — or rather, 
to Mark Antony's wife Fulvia, who, it is said, had 
cherished a bitter grudge against Cicero and now 
triumphantly and dramatically thrust a needle 
into the once eloquent tongue of the murdered 
man, when his bleeding head was exposed to view 
in the Forum. It was a horrible satisfaction of 
cruel spite! 

The combined forces of Octavian and Antony 
soon met those of Brutus and Cassius in the 
famous battle of Philippi in Macedonia, a city 
far away from Rome, but made more memorable 
later by the imprisonment and deliverance there of 
the Christian missionaries Paul and Silas*, As the 
result of their humiliating defeat in that battle, 
both Brutus and Cassius committed suicide. This 
was in November, forty-two years before Christ. 

Octavian returned to Italy to receive great hon- 
ors at Rome, and Mark Antony remained to be 
the ostentatious ruler of the East. But the latter 




Facing page 16 



MARK ANTONY 



OESAR AUGUSTUS 17 

soon became infatuated with the notorious Cleo- 
patra, the queen of Egypt. 

This woman played a large part in the case. 
She had come to Mark Antony at Tarsus in Cilicia 
to win him back from the wrath he had manifested 
because she had not sent aid to him and Octavian 
in their war against Brutus and Cassius. She 
made her appearance before him in the most sen- 
sational manner. In the summer of the year 41 
B. C. she sailed up the river Cydnus in Asia Mi- 
nor, on which the city of Tarsus, the capital of 
Cilicia, was situated. She was reclining upon a 
gilded couch, under a stately canopy, upon the 
deck of her galley, which was propelled by silver 
oars and purple sails. She was personating the 
goddess Venus, attended by the Graces and fanned 
by Cupids. Pipes and lutes discoursed delightful 
music and the air was perfumed with sweet odors. 
The Apostle Paul, when he was a youth at Tar- 
sus, doubtless heard related this strange incident 
that had taken place in his native city two genera- 
tions before his time. Mark Antony disgracefully 
became Cleopatra's complete slave and, carried 
away by her insidious allurements, he yielded to 
her capricious dictation in many atrocious acts of 
oppression and cruelty. 

There followed a period of disagreement and 
bloody conflict between Octavian and Mark An- 
tony. It was connected with the appropriation 
of private lands in Italy in order to reward Oc- 
tavian 's soldiers. The principal event in that 



18 UNDEE (L3ESAKS' SHADOW 

short civil war was the siege and capture of the 
strong hill-town of Perusia (the modern Perugia) , 
where an old Eoman gateway still bears the name 
of the Arch of Augustus. I strayed out of that 
gate, I remember, on my visit to Perugia and 
looked up at the massive stones that frowned upon 
the modern intruder. At the period of history of 
which we are speaking Mark Antony was still in 
the East, but his brother, Lucius Antonius, lead- 
ing an army in his behalf, occupied this famous 
old hill-town. Octavian encamped around it, and 
finally subdued it by siege and famine. It was 
only saved from plunder by his soldiers, after his 
capture of it, because it was set on fire by one of 
its own citizens, although many of these were put 
to death by the relentless victor. 

In order to offset the injury to his prospects 
caused by this defeat of his brother and to carry 
out plots which he had been making with his allies 
in Italy, Mark Antony crossed the Mediterranean 
sea from the East, invaded Italy, and expected to 
fight with Octavian. But these plans w^ere frus- 
trated, because his soldiers and those of Octavian, 
having fought together at Philippi, were not en- 
thusiastic for any such engagement with each 
other. Negotiations followed. A new treaty was 
made at Brundusium on the Adriatic coast. A 
new division of the world was mapped out between 
the two leaders, and the treaty was supposed to 
be confirmed by a notable marriage that then 
took place. This was between Mark Antony, 



CAESAR AUGUSTUS 19 

whose wife Fulvia had died, and Octavia, the sis- 
ter of Octavian. It was celebrated with great 
pomp and joy. Fond hopes were entertained on 
the occasion for an era of great peace and pros- 
perity. The poet Virgil is thought to have cele- 
brated this treaty of Brundusium in his famous 
Fourth Eclogue. In glowing language, — remind- 
ing us of the metaphors, if not of the spirit of Old 
Testament Messianic predictions, — he speaks of 
the birth of a predestined boy who should inaugu- 
rate a reign of peace and blessedness on earth. 
Exactly what boy he meant has been a subject of 
much discussion. Some Christians of the Middle 
Ages in their zeal claimed that he meant Jesus, 
the Christ ; and, as he refers to the Sibyl of Cumse 
as having foretold the happy period, her name, in 
a later age, was curiously coupled in the old Latin 
hymn "Dies Irae" with that of the psalmist David 
as giving her prophetic testimony : 

Teste David cum Sibylla. 1 

And so, Raphael and Michaelangelo both de- 
picted her as a prophetess in their Christian fres- 
coes, now to be seen in Eome. There were so 
many Jews in Rome in Virgil's time that he may 
have read the prophecy of Isaiah and may have 
caught something of his imagery; but it is not 
probable that in his lines he expresses anything 
more than an optimistic pagan's general hope of a 
glorious prince and a brighter day. 

a As David and the Sibyl say. 



20 UNDER C^SARS' SHADOW 

After the festivities of his marriage with Oc- 
tavia, Antony went back to his eastern domain, 
with larger projects and many promises. But it 
was not long before his profligate tastes again 
manifested themselves. Not even the thought of 
the noble character of his new wife, Octavia, could 
restrain him. He went on from one great folly 
to another. Although he came back once to south- 
ern Italy and renewed with Octavian, at Taren- 
tum, the terms of "the triumvirate" for another 
five years, it was all in vain. The wily Cleopatra 
had again established her influence over him. 
Finally, at her instigation, he placed himself at 
the head of an oriental fleet and army and pre- 
pared to meet the forces of Octavian. The de- 
cisive battle between them was fought on the sea 
at Actium, northwest of Greece, on the 2d of Sep- 
tember, B.C. 41. Antony was completely routed. 
He narrowly made his escape on the galley of 
Cleopatra, which opportunely appeared upon the 
scene for his rescue. Almost immediately, in the 
Egyptian city of Alexandria, both he and his in- 
famous enchantress perished tragically by suicide. 

Thus Octavian became the sole master of prac- 
tically the whole world. Great success had been 
achieved by his army over the Parthians in the 
far East. Herod the Great, an Idumaean, was con- 
firmed about this time in his authority as King of 
Judea. 

Jerusalem had been captured by the Roman 
general Pompey, in 63 B.C., and Judea had then 



OZESAR AUGUSTUS 21 

become a part of the Roman province of Syria. 
The Roman control of it had, however, been in- 
termitted nntil this time, when Herod entered it 
and reigned triumphantly. Several other impor- 
tant cities were also added to his domain. But it 
was only as a subject of Rome that he had this 
power. He was supported in his authority by the 
army of Octavian, and was expected to obey every 
beck and motion made to him by that emperor. 
His administration of the affairs of that country 
was vigorous and splendid, though it was char- 
acterized by revolting cruelties. It is interesting 
in this connection to remember how in early Old 
Testament days Esau had sold his birthright to 
Jacob, who henceforth supplanted him. There had 
often, since that day, been enmity between the 
children of Esau and the children of Jacob. Now, 
for a time, this prince from Edom, a descendant 
of Esau, sat upon the throne of Judea and reigned 
over the posterity of Jacob, albeit he was over- 
shadowed and controlled, as we have seen, by Oc- 
tavian — a mightier potentate than himself. 

It was when Herod was king at Jerusalem in 
this way, — fawning upon the favor of Octavian 
and fearing to incur that monarch's displeasure, 
— that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. 

The Messiah, whom prophets had foretold and 
whom the Jews were longing for, made His ad- 
vent in the humblest way. The Prince of Peace 
came as a little child into a world of awful self- 
ishness and cruelty and conflict. Herod must have 



22 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

died not long after that event. The sufferings 
of his final illness are thought to have exasperated 
his anxiety and cruelty and perhaps were among 
the causes which led to his ordering the slaughter, 
as described by Matthew, of the few young male 
infants in the village of Bethlehem, the number 
not being large enough to make the Jewish his- 
torian Josephus record the incident alongside of 
Herod's other and more extensive iniquities. 
While that ruler alienated the affections of the 
Jews, yet he professed to be a Jew in religion and, 
with scrupulous care, rebuilt the temple at Jeru- 
salem, which temple continued to stand during 
the ministry of Jesus and of the Apostles. After 
the death of Herod there was made among his 
sons a distribution of the provinces of Palestine 
by the emperor Octavian. It was because of fear 
of one of these sons, Archelaus, who ruled in 
Judea, that Joseph and Mary, returning with the 
young child from Egypt, did not go to Bethlehem, 
but turned aside and went to Nazareth in Galilee. 
Sextus, the son of Pompey, who had commanded 
a piratical fleet on the Mediterranean, intercept- 
ing ships bound from Alexandria to Italy, was con- 
quered by the forces of Octavian and was slain. 
The reputed son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, 
Caesarion by name, was also put to death. 

Octavian was now made Imperator, and Censor 
of the Empire for life. This does not mean that 
all of the forms of a republic were at once de- 



OESAR AUGUSTUS 23 

stroyed, but that the government was adminis- 
tered in the spirit of an absolute monarchy. 

Octavian retained the family name of Caesar, 
which was also assumed by his successors, as an 
official designation, even when they belonged to 
other lines of descent; just as are the modern 
titles of " Kaiser" in Germany and "Czar" in 
Russia, which are, indeed, derived from the Ro- 
man name. 

Octavian was a man of great ambition and had 
overcome the violence and perfidy of others by 
often using their own methods. He was reserved 
in speech and bearing, and was somewhat simple 
in his manner of living. He had a large degree 
of coolness and self-control. He was shrewd, pol- 
itic, and far-seeing in adapting means to his ends. 
He gathered all the lines of power into his hands 
almost before the people realized that he was 
doing it. We are told that he had under his direct 
management "the disposal of revenues, the move- 
ments of the army, the execution of the laws, the 
administration of internal reforms and the adjust- 
ment of foreign relations." First the senators 
then the plebians yielded to him many of their 
long-cherished rights. Under his management the 
famed Republic became an empire; and he was 
the emperor indeed. His dominions extended 
from the Atlantic to Arabia and from the islands 
of Britain to the sands of Africa. 

"While Rome had been conquering the world she 
had been losing her liberties at home. Nothing 



24 UNDEE OESABS' SHADOW 

had really been left of liberty except its name. 
But it must be admitted that, intense and stern 
as Octavian was in grasping after power, he 
showed wise moderation in its exercise. He recon- 
ciled the people to the loss of their freedom by 
securing to them greater material prosperity and 
many exciting amusements. He expended great 
sums on public roads and splendid buildings, 
sewers, reservoirs, bridges, quays, parks, gardens, 
and public offices in great profusion. Many of 
his associates followed his example and erected 
costly edifices, ornamented with columns and stat- 
ues in marble and bronze. It was his boast that 
he had found Rome built of brick and would leave 
it made of marble. He patronized the arts and 
the sciences. He gathered around him men of 
brilliant talents, — statesmen, orators, philoso- 
phers, historians, painters, sculptors and poets. 
Vipsianus Agrippa, his prime minister, Maecenas, 
Cicero, Livy, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, besides 
many lesser lights, distinguished his reign and 
adorned his court. What the age of Pericles was 
to Greece and that of Elizabeth was to England 
the reign of this man was to the Roman empire. 
In religion he was not much more than a stoic 
philosopher, but he recognized the value of a re- 
ligious faith among the people and so was glad 
to encourage them in the maintenance of pagan 
altars and temples, many of which he built. It is 
said that in the year 28 B.C. not less than eighty- 
two temples were rebuilt in Rome itself. He 











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Facing page 24 



CICERO 



CLESAR AUGUSTUS 25 

erected and restored the temple of Apollo upon 
the Palatine, and near it he established a splendid 
library. The Senate decreed that he should have 
the then unique title of Augustus, — the august 
one. It was a title that Octavian's successors 
tried to retain, but it has become his own special 
and superb designation in the pages of history, so 
that we now often forget that it was really only 
an adjective and not his proper name. The eighth 
month in the year was called August, in his honor, 
just as the seventh month had been called July, 
in honor of Julius Caesar. 

Augustus, as we must now call him, was the 
Caesar for whom was named the city of Caesarea, 
which Herod the Great built on the seacoast of 
Palestine, to be the political capital of that coun- 
try, and which the book of the Acts has led us to 
associate later with the centurion Cornelius, in 
whose house the Apostle Peter preached. It was 
the home city of the Evangelist Philip and his 
four daughters (Acts xxi:8, 9) and the scene of 
Paul's great speeches before the Roman gov- 
ernors, Felix and his wife Drusilla, Festus, and 
King Agrippa II, and his sister, Bernice. (Acts 
xxiv:24; xxv:13.) Herod, as another act of obse- 
quious flattery, also built a marble temple to Au- 
gustus at Paneas, at one of the sources of the 
Jordan, near the base of Mount Hermon, at the 
place that his son Herod Philip II, the tetrarch, 
afterward rebuilt and called, — from the emperor 
and himself, — Caesarea Philippi, whither Jesus 



26 UNDER GZESARS' SHADOW 

Christ once came during his ministry, the most 
northern point he ever visited, and held one of 
the most significant conversations with his dis- 
ciples. 

My memory recalls with great pleasure the day 
when a little group of tourists in Palestine (one of 
which I had the privilege of being), there pitched 
after a weary day's journey their white tents, 
amid desolation and fragmentary ruins, and gazed 
upon the spring waters rushing, fresh and cold, 
from the venerated cave under the hill. Around 
this cave some architectural niches for statues are 
cut into the natural rock, but the statues have 
long since disappeared. Its original name of 
Paneas, derived from the rustic god Pan, is now 
corrupted into Baneas. A massive castle of the 
crusaders frowns down from a great height, but 
in the valley only wrecks of man's ambitious 
structures make a pathetic contrast with the beau- 
ties of nature. It was in that region, probably, 
on one of the foothills of Mount Hermon, that the 
Transfiguration took place. 

If we turn to consider the family life of the Em- 
peror Augustus, we learn that after one or two 
betrothals in his early youth, which engagements 
were not followed up, he married a lady of high 
rank named Scribonia, by whom he had one child, 
a daughter, named Julia. Afterward, when he 
was known as Octavian, and was one of the tri- 
umvirs, he either fell desperately in love with an- 
other man's wife or he was swayed by his intense 



OESAR AUGUSTUS 27 

ambition at the time to ally himself with the aris- 
tocratic families of Eome. At any rate, he di- 
vorced Scribonia and carried off as his wife Livia 
Drusilla, who was the wife of a prominent citizen, 
Tiberius Claudius Nero. By him Livia had one 
son, who afterward became the Emperor Tiberius. 
She was soon to be the mother of another, the 
celebrated general Drusus. So far was Tiberius 
Claudius Nero from resisting her divorce from 
him to marry Augustus, that, it is said, he gave 
her a dowry and was present at the wedding. 
Some historians, indeed, think that it was in ac- 
cordance with his own plans. He was old and 
infirm. His wife was only nineteen and he may 
have been glad to provide for her marriage, pos- 
sibly, with the young and rising triumvir, and 
thus conciliate him to a better treatment of the 
aristocratic party. 

However this may have been, it illustrates the 
loose Roman views of marriage in that day. It 
put Livia in a strange and trying position. Her 
own father had been among those aristocrats 
whom the triumvirs had proscribed and hunted. 
He had fought with Brutus and Cassius and had 
died by his own hand after being defeated with 
them by the army of Augustus at the battle of 
Philippi. Two years before this marriage Livia 
had fled from Italy with her husband, Tiberius 
Claudius Nero, to escape the vengeance of Octa- 
vian. Now she leaves the former to become the 
wife of the latter. She had to turn away for a 



28 UNDER OESARS' SHADOW 

time from her own son Tiberius and, three months 
later, when her child Drusus was born in the home 
of Augustus, this second son was sent to the house 
of his father, Tiberius Claudius Nero. 

Serene and practical, Livia seems to have ac- 
cepted the fate assigned her and endured all the 
sacrifices it involved. A few years later, however, 
when Tiberius Claudius Nero died, he appointed 
Octavian, — who had then become the Emperor 
Augustus, — the guardian of his sons, and Livia 
received them back and cared for them with a 
mother's devoted solicitude. She seems truly to 
have won the admiration if not the affection of 
Augustus. He was proud of her ability, her faith- 
fulness, her household thrift, her wise counsel in 
the affairs of state. They lived simply in their 
house upon the Palatine. It was devoid either 
of magnificent display or precious objects of art. 
The furniture was exhibited in the second century 
of our era and was wondered at for its plain- 
ness. She superintended personally the treat- 
ment of the wool, its distribution among the 
slaves, and its weaving for family use. Augustus 
never wore any togas that were otherwise made. 
Their several villas at Lanuvium, Palestrina, and 
Tivoli were all unpretentious. They sometimes 
entertained prominent people at dinner, but only 
on extraordinary occasions were there six courses 
served, — usually there being but three. 

On one public occasion Augustus made a long 
speech in which he cited Livia as a model for 



CAESAR AUGUSTUS 29 

the ladies of Eome. He set forth minutely the 
details of her household management, — what she 
did, how she dressed, at what expense, how she 
amused herself, and what amusements she deemed 
suitable for a person of her position. The Ro- 
mans regarded her as the perfect type of an aris- 
tocratic lady. She seems to have been dignified 
and handsome in person, and thoughtful in spirit. 
Her two sons, — Tiberius and Drusus, the step- 
sons of Augustus, — were also very popular. Not- 
withstanding the outrageous wrong of her com- 
pelled divorce from her former husband, many 
annoyances from her stepdaughter Julia, and the 
temptations of a royal court, she maintained a 
strong and self -controlled character, and, during 
a married life of fifty years, kept to the last the 
affection of her husband. It is reported that he 
said to her at last, as he lay upon his death-bed : 

"Preserve the memory of a husband who has 
loved you very tenderly." 

When asked at one time how she contrived to 
retain his affection, Dion Cassius tells us that she 
significantly replied : 

' i My secret is very simple : I have made it the 
study of my life to please him, and I have never 
manifested any indiscreet curiosity with regard to 
his public or private affairs." 

In all the life of the imperial court, not only 
in the reign of Augustus but, as we shall see, in 
that of her son Tiberius, the able and tactful man- 



30 UNDER CLESARS' SHADOW 

agement of this commanding lady was an impor- 
tant factor. 

But, aside from his regard for Livia and in 
spite of all his wealth and power and the flattery 
of his subjects, Augustus was far from happy. 
He had been bereaved by death of many of those 
whom he esteemed and loved, such as Drusus, 
Caius and Lucius Caesar. He was often the vic- 
tim of mortification, sorrow and moroseness. His 
daughter, Julia, disgraced him by her immoral 
conduct. There was always incompatibility be- 
tween her and Livia. His grandsons died soon 
after. He did not take much delight in the 
thought of his stepson, Tiberius, as his successor, 
and the marriage of Julia to Tiberius did not im- 
prove the situation. But the jealousies and in- 
trigues of his court made for him constant trouble. 

In his last days he made a generous will, dis- 
tributing thereby gifts to many of those who had 
served him, including huge donations to the sol- 
diers, to the public treasury, and to the populace. 
He also compiled a list of achievements by which 
the empire had been benefited under his reign and 
for which he had received public honors. This 
memorial he intended to be cast in bronze for the 
doors of the great mausoleum that he had built 
in Rome for his burial place. We are indebted 
for its preservation, however, to the Galatians, 
who, inhabiting a province in the heart of Asia 
Minor, had erected during the life of Augustus a 
temple in his honor at their city of Ancyra, the 



(LESAR AUGUSTUS 31 

modern Angora. They obtained a copy of the 
memorial and inscribed it upon the walls of the 
vestibule of this temple ; and there, though greatly 
marred and broken, it can be read even at the 
present day, — a fine record of the great monarch's 
deeds. 

It was the propensity of Augustus to use the 
vast riches at his disposal for the benefit of the 
people. Sometimes he distributed freely corn, 
wine, and oil and sometimes allowances in money. 
He asserted that he spent in gifts what was equiv- 
alent to the sum of twenty- six millions of dollars 
(American money). To these many other dona- 
tions must be added ; so that it has been reckoned 
that his expenditure for the benefit of the people 
amounted to ninety-one millions of dollars. Says 
Lanciani : 

"Were we not in the presence of official statistics and of state 
documents, we should hardly feel inclined to believe these enor- 
mous statements." 

Augustus died at Nola in Campania, Italy, Au- 
gust 19, A. D. 14, when he was nearly seventy-six 
years of age. Before he died he had a long con- 
versation with his stepson Tiberius. On the day 
of his death, when some friends entered his room, 
he said to them : 

"Do you think that I have acted my part well 
on the stage of life? If you are satisfied, give 
me your applause!" 



32 UNDER (LESARS' SHADOW 

Soon after, he expired in the arms of his wife 
Livia. 

"His body," it is said, "was transported from 
village to village, from city to city, along the Ap- 
pian Way by the members of each municipal coun- 
cil in turn. To avoid the heat, the procession 
marched only at night. At the foot of the Alban 
Hills the whole Roman knighthood had come out 
to meet the bearers. Thence, over the last ten 
miles of the road, the progress was like a trium- 
phal one, till the bier was placed in the vestibule 
of the Palace on the Palatine Hill. Afterwards 
the body was carried to the Forum, to the space 
in front of the Temple of Julius Caesar, where 
from the rostra a panegyric was read by Tibe- 
rius. Another oration was delivered at the op- 
posite end of the Forum by Drusus, the adopted 
son of Tiberius. Thence the senators, the high 
priests, the knights, the army and a large part of 
the leading citizens continued the march by the 
Via Flaminia to the Ustrinum, or enclosure for 
cremation. Officers and men threw on the pyre 
the decorations which Augustus had awarded 
them for bravery, and the torch was applied by 
the captains of the legions which he had often 
led to victory." 

Five days afterward Livia and the chief men of 
the Equestrian order gathered up his ashes and 
bore them to the Mausoleum. 

During the lifetime of Augustus he had been 
venerated as a god in the provinces ; now he was 



CAESAR AUGUSTUS 33 

actually worshiped in Rome itself. , Adoration 
was paid to him in many private homes. He 
also had a cult, sanctuaries, and a priesthood as- 
signed to him. Livia became the special priestess 
of the new divinity. 

There have come down to us, in a remarkable 
state of preservation, many statues, medallions, 
busts, and coins, which have kept for us his face, 
his form, and his bearing. In the Hall of Busts 
in the Vatican Museum we have that beautiful 
head which was found at Ostia, at the mouth of 
the Tiber, in 1808. 2 It is admired by all, and is 
always spoken of as "the Young Augustus." It 
represents the future emperor with a prominent 
nose, an intellectual forehead, wavy hair, a 
rounded chin, and an expression both thoughtful 
and amiable. What was he thinking of when the 
sculptor caught his expression? Had he premo- 
nitions of the successes and responsibilities before 
him? Our knowledge of his subsequent career 
illuminates for us his marble features. They 
have an attractive ideality, which we can hardly 
associate with one who afterward became such 
a stern warrior ; and we are drawn to him for the 
moment with tender sympathy and exalted hopes. 

Without stopping to describe other figures of 
him, it is interesting to contrast this one with that 
splendid full-length marble statue, also in the Vat- 
ican, which was not discovered until 1863. It was 
found buried in the ruins of the villa of his wife, 

2 See Frontispiece. 



34 UNDER (LESARS ' SHADOW 

Livia, seven miles from Rome. This also bears 
every mark of being a portrait from life. How 
impressive that it has been hidden in the earth 
for so many centuries, during which many king- 
doms have risen and fallen ; and now it has been 
brought forth, almost like a resurrection, and we 
can stand, as it were, face to face with him! It 
shows him to us in all his majesty, late in his ca- 
reer, when he had become the grand master of the 
world. He stands in a calm and commanding at- 
titude, bearing his weight on his right foot, wear- 
ing his military breastplate, with drapery care- 
fully arranged around his hips and thrown over 
his left arm. His left hand carries a scepter, 
while his right is extended as if he were deliber- 
ately addressing his army. The countenance 
bears the stamp of much experience and of deep 
seriousness, if not of anxiety. He seems to be 
oppressed by the weight of empire. On his breast- 
plate or cuirass, which appears to be copied from 
the metallic original worn by him, are seen Greek 
designs, which have been compared with cameos 
for the beauty and delicacy of their detail. The 
central group of these embossed figures represents 
a Roman general receiving some military stand- 
ards from a conquered foe. It is very probably 
commemorative of the victory won by the Roman 
army over the Parthians about 17 B.C., when Au- 
gustus had deputed his stepson Tiberius to carry 
on the campaign and afterward to secure in a 
formal manner from Phraates, the king of the 



(LESAR AUGUSTUS 35 

Parthians, those bronze eagles that the Parthians 
had taken away from the Roman general Crassus 
and his soldiers more than thirty years before. 
That defeat had been a bitter recollection to the 
Romans ever since it occurred, and the restoration 
of the standards was a matter of corresponding 
rejoicing. They were sent to Rome, where they 
were placed by Augustus in the Temple of Mars 
Ultor. It seems probable that this statue was 
carved soon after that time, about 17 B. C. On 
the two sides of the representation, bent over in 
sorrow, sit two symbolical figures, the probable 
genii of two conquered nations. Near the neck 
of the cuirass appears the god Caelus emerging 
from the clouds, holding a scarf blown by the wind 
and arching above his head, while before him 
Apollo riding in his chariot reminds us of the 
figures of Guido 's famous fresco of Aurora on the 
ceiling of the Rospigliosi Casino in Rome. 3 No 
figure could better personify the conscious grav- 
ity of universal lordship than does this stately 
statue of Augustus. When first discovered some 
portions of it bore traces of coloring. A little 
cherub riding upon a dolphin is placed against the 
right foot, supporting the work and, by contrast, 
setting forth its dignity. 

I have spoken of the great buildings erected in 
the time of Augustus. Notwithstanding the fact 

8 It seems at first thought that Guido must have gotten the sug- 
gestion for his group from these figures on the cuirass of Au- 
gustus. But how could he? During G-uido's life this statue was 
unknown and lay buried in the ground. 



36 UNDER CJESAES' SHADOW 

that the medieval Romans made the ancient ruins 
of their city such a quarry for building material 
out of which to construct their palaces, some evi- 
dences of this emperor's noble edifices still exist. 
The Regia, or Royal House (of which now only 
a few traces are found), in the Forum, had been 
the residence of the rulers of the early Roman 
kingdom and afterward of the leaders of the Re- 
public ; but, as Augustus had been born upon the 
Palatine and as that historic hill afforded a much 
more spacious and commanding site, the people, — 
when they made Augustus Imperator twenty-eight 
years before Christ, — there erected for him a 
splendid palace. Foundations of this building, 
which are probably not yet fully excavated, are 
still to be seen. 

The beautiful mosaic pavements and frescoed 
walls of some of the chambers of the house of 
Livia his wife can also be visited on the Palatine 
Hill. This is the only building of its kind in the 
midst of the ruined palaces of the emperors. 
Livia had received it from her first husband, the 
father of Tiberius, and to it she retired after the 
death of her second husband, Augustus. A flight 
of six steps descends to the marble floor, which 
is laid out in patterns. From this three chambers 
can be entered. The paintings upon the plastered 
walls of the dining-room and sitting-room are 
very artistic in design and coloring. They are 
among the most ancient paintings in existence. 
They represent mythological scenes and char- 




Facing page 37 



ALTAR OF PEACE 



CLESAR AUGUSTUS 37 

acters, — Mercury, Polyphemus, and Gralatea, with 
fruits, flowers, masks, and sacrificial offerings. 
Some of the tints are still bright, and suggest a 
homelike warmth. The triclinium or dining-room 
is recognizable by an inscription. 

Near the Tiber we have the five columns and 
other parts of the Portico of Octavia, which was 
erected by Augustus and dedicated to his sister 
Octavia, In the days of the republic, porticoes or 
open colonnaded buildings for public resorts had 
been almost a rarity; but Augustus introduced 
a fashion and taste for them. In less than twenty 
years the Campus Martius (now covered by mod- 
ern Rome) is said to have been full of them. They 
added much to the architectural splendor of the 
city. The Portico of Octavia is said to have had 
three hundred columns, enclosing a court with 
temples to Jupiter and Juno. 

The massive architecture of what is left of the 
Theatre of Marcellus, in the same region, reminds 
us of Octavia 's son, to whose memory Augustus 
dedicated it. Twelve arches of the outer circular 
wall are now used as blacksmiths' and other shops. 
The lower story is partly sunk in the earth. Its 
columns are much battered. Its arches and capi- 
tals are also badly bruised. In the eleventh cen- 
tury it was used as a fortress. Afterward a pal- 
ace was built on the mound of rubbish within it. 
The historian Niebuhr, when he was the Russian 
ambassador, occupied it as his home. 

The temple of Mars Ultor (Avenger) is another 



38 UNDER (LESARS* SHADOW 

of the buildings of Augustus. Before the battle 
of Philippi, which was such an important turning- 
point in his career, he made a vow that should he 
be victorious he would build a temple to Mars the 
Avenger, because the assassination of his foster- 
father Julius Caesar would be avenged by such a 
victory over Brutus and Cassius on that occasion. 
With the fulfillment of this vow he combined the 
construction of a new Forum, or public exchange, 
for Eome. 

These noble edifices were sometimes in later 
centuries degraded to very commonplace uses. 
The Portico of Octavia, for example, was for 
many generations and until lately used as a fish 
market. The buildings mentioned were all large 
and costly constructions. As Augustus deposited 
in the Temple of Mars Ultor the rescued stand- 
ards of Crassus, so for several generations vic- 
torious generals stored away their insignia in the 
same place. One of its features was a gallery of 
statues of the military heroes whose victories 
had enlarged the territory and glory of the em- 
pire. The costly pavement of the Forum now lies 
twenty feet below the present level of the ground. 
It requires an effort of the imagination to recon- 
struct the ancient scene from the old, soiled frag- 
ments. Yet it can be done by the student of all 
the surroundings ; and future excavations will re- 
veal much more. For a people among whom the 
army and war were so important, the Temple of 
Mars was a center of the greatest interest. Its 




06 

hi 



CAESAR AUGUSTUS 39 

beauty is described as of the highest sort. Augus- 
tus says in his will that the Roman citizens who 
fought under his orders numbered five hundred 
thousand. At the time of his death one hundred 
and sixty thousand Roman citizens were still serv- 
ing under the flag. The number of men-of-war 
captured, burnt or sunk is stated at six hundred. 
But Augustus honored peace no less than war. 
He thrice took the census of Rome, showing an 
increase of the inhabitants from four millions 
sixty-three thousand to nearly five millions. In 
the inscriptions, already referred to as existing 
in the ruins of the temple of Angora in Asia Mi- 
nor, he tells us that in the year 13 B. C. the Sen- 
ate ordered an altar to be built in the Campus 
Martins to the divinity Pax Augusta (Augustan 
Peace), upon which magistrates, priests, and ves- 
tal virgins might offer a yearly sacrifice. In after 
ages this altar became covered with rubbish and 
above the rubbish was accumulated in time a cem- 
etery belonging to the adjoining church of San 
Lorenzo in Lucina. But this cemetery, it is said, 
was ten feet below the present level of the city. 
In the latter part of the thirteenth century, over it 
and over the altar of Peace beneath it Cardinal 
Evesham built a palace, which has since passed 
through various hands. In the early part of the 
sixteenth century five carved panels of remark- 
able beauty were brought to light from this 
ground. Other pieces were found, but were car- 
ried to various places, — even to Paris, Vienna, 



40 UNDER CL3ESABS' SHADOW 

and England. It was not until about the begin- 
ning of the present century that it was proved 
that they belonged to the famous Augustan Altar 
of Peace. Excavations have since been made upon 
the original site, sixteen feet below the street 
level. 

Vaulted passages have been constructed, so that 
it is possible to pass along two sides of the altar '& 
foundation; and at the end of one of these pas- 
sages, practically embedded in earth and rubbish, 
may be seen to-day a most beautifully carved 
panel showing a sacrificial procession. The altar 
stood upon a platform three and one-quarter feet 
high and measuring nineteen and a half by eleven 
and one-half feet. It was approached by steps on 
four sides. All this was placed in the midst of a 
sacred area thirty-eight feet by thirty-five feet, 
enclosed by marble walls elaborately carved in 
relief on both sides. Among the representations 
is a procession moving toward a sacrificial scene. 
The figures are characterized by great dignity and 
their drapery is arranged to produce a graceful 
effect. Augustus himself and many of the per- 
sons high in rank and power during his reign are 
grouped as if in conversation. It is evident that 
the whole structure was a most highly wrought 
and artistic composition, a fitting monument to 
him whose boast it was that he had secured unity 
and peace throughout his empire and had caused 
the gates of Janus, the god of war, to be closed 
for a long time. Professor James C. Egbert, of 



CiESAB AUGUSTUS 41 

Columbia University, in his description of this 
altar in the " Records of the Past" for 1906, to 
which I am indebted, thus described two of the 
panels, which are now in the Uffizzi Gallery at 
Florence : 



In one of these there are two family groups both marked by the 
presence of husband and wife. The tall young man on the left 
is Drusus, who died B. C. 9, greatly mourned by the emperor and 
the people. He wears a military cloak, as he has left his com- 
mand in Rheetia to attend the dedication of the altar. His wife, 
the beautiful Antonia, stands immediately before him and their 
conversation is interrupted by the warning gesture of the figure 
between, who calls for silence lest they mar the sanctity of the 
occasion. The child at their feet is either Germanieus or the 
later emperor, Claudius. The group to the right may be Tiberius 
and his wife Julia, whom he, much to his disgust, was compelled 
to marry after the death of her former husband, Upsanius Agrippa. 
The wife may be the sister of Antonia in the first group. Then 
the husband would be Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, the grand- 
father of Nero. Vipsanius Agrippa played a very important part 
in bringing about the reign of peace and we should expect to 
find him among the members of the imperial group. The central 
figure in another panel has been recognized as Agrippa because 
of the distinction suggested by the repose of the countenance. 
Some see here a sadness of expression natural to one who has 
suffered much. He is preceded by a young man who bears on his 
shoulder the official ax, for Agrippa appears here as a high- 
priest. The boy grasping his toga is Lucius Caesar, his son, and 
the beautiful woman on his left may be Julia, his wife, or 
Vipsania Agrippina, his daughter. 

To this description we may add that such grace- 
ful and charming sculptures, with their portraits 
of leading personages, could not have been un- 
veiled to the Eoman public without awakening 
great admiration. 

To the period of Augustus also belongs the 
foundation, at least, of the Pantheon. His prime 



42 UNDER OESARS' SHADOW 

minister and son-in-law, Marcus Vipsanius Agrip- 
pa, erected a temple, twenty-seven years before 
Christ, at the north end of the warm baths, which 
he had established here in the Campus Martius. 
It was dedicated to several gods. It has often 
been repaired and probably altered and enlarged 
by restorations. The emperors Hadrian, Septi- 
mius Severus, and Caracalla all contributed to its 
preservation and development. In antiquity the 
portico was reached by five steps, which are now 
covered by the rising of the ground. Since A. D. 
609 it has been consecrated as a Christian church. 
Notwithstanding this, in A. D. 663 Constans II, 
emperor at Constantinople, carried away to his 
city the gilt-bronze tiles of the roof. 

Throughout the middle ages this temple was 
prized as the palladium and emblem of Rome. 
The main part of the building is circular in form, 
— the height and diameter of which are said to 
be equal, each being one hundred and forty-two 
feet, — and is composed of that concrete that the 
ancient Romans knew how to make so lasting. It 
is lighted by an uncovered aperture, thirty feet in 
diameter, in the center of the dome, rimmed by an 
elegant ancient cornice of bronze. The rich col- 
umns of different kinds of marble and the other 
decorations of the interior are most imposing, and 
correspond well with the stately Corinthian por- 
tico which forms the front of the edifice and under 
which once stood colossal bronze statues of 
Augustus and Agrippa. 



CMBAR AUGUSTUS 43 

The five front steps by which it was entered in 
ancient times, are now covered by the raising of 
the ground all around the building. The entrance 
is still closed by the ancient massive, bronze doors. 
In 1632 Pope Urban VIII, one of the Barberini 
family, took away the bronze columns and ceiling 
of the portico to make out of them the elaborate 
pillars which support the canopy of the high altar 
in St. Peter's, and also cannon for the Castle of St. 
Angelo. This occasioned the circulation of a 
popular epigram of Pasquin. "What the Bar- 
barians did not do the Barberini did." 

The Pantheon is the noblest and best preserved 
building of ancient Borne, — the only one, indeed, 
having both its walls and vaulting intact, and it 
is still closed by its ancient heavy bronze doors. 
Lord Byron's lines concerning it are well worth 
quoting because of the conciseness of his descrip- 
tion. 

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime, 

Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods 

From Jove to Jesus, spared and blessed by time, 

Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods 

Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods 

His way through thorns to ashes! Glorious dome, 

Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods 

Shiver upon thee, sanctuary and home 

Of art and piety, Pantheon, pride of Eome! 

It is not strange that it was deemed the most 
fitting place for the burial of the great artist, 
Eaphael, and for that of the King of United Italy, 
Victor Emmanuel. 



44 UNDER OESARS* SHADOW 

Of the former event the poet Rogers says 



When Raphael went, 

His heavenly face the mirror of his mind, 
His mind a temple for all lovely things 
To flock and to inhabit — when he went, 
Wrapped in his sable cloak, the cloak he wore, 
To sleep beneath the venerable dome, 
By those attended who in life had loved, 
Had worship 'd, following in his steps to fame, 
'Twas on an April day, when Nature smiles. 
All Borne was there. 



Victor Emmanuel's tomb is always covered with 
wreaths, tributes by the living to his honor. 

The remnants of the great mausoleum of Au- 
gustus, — in which not only he but many of his suc- 
cessors were interred, — are not now sought out by 
many except students of antiquities. The last of 
the emperors buried here was Nerva. Near the 
river Tiber, on what was then the Campus Mar- 
tius or field of Mars, on a great platform of stone, 
now beneath the ground, rose the huge circular 
building of two stories, in which were the cham- 
bers for the dead. Augustus was buried in the 
central chamber, which was covered with a dome. 
From this radiated fourteen smaller ones, most 
of which can now be traced, though in a ruined 
condition. Above these was a pyramidal mound 
of earth in terraces planted with cypress trees and 
surmounted with a large statue of the emperor 
himself. The whole was surrounded by an attrac- 
tive park. 

For centuries the monument was well known to 



OESAR AUGUSTUS 45 

the people. War, earthquake and neglect have 
now made its ruins one of the least conspicuous 
sights in Rome, but some will ever find in them a 
deep pathetic interest. After some searching I 
found the entrance to them not far from the Via 
Di Ripetta. Upon my application, the custodian, 
who was an old woman, admitted me from a sort 
of court, where I could look up at a part of the 
circular exterior and where there was a fountain 
at the side. An inscription tablet let into the wall 
informs the visitor (in Latin) that here is the 
western wall of the mausoleum of Augustus dis- 
closed by the removal of buildings. What seemed 
to be electric wires, stretched down along the side 
of the building, suggested a curious connection 
between the beginning of the first century and the 
beginning of the twentieth. Within the structure 
I paced the corridors, gazed at the arched ceiling, 
and could see out through the large windows into 
the central space. In the twelfth century the 
central dome was thrown down by an earthquake. 
Afterward the center was used as an open-air 
arena and was occupied by a popular circus until 
a few years ago. At the time of my visit it was 
a storehouse for the great plaster models for the 
sculptures to be placed on the new monument that 
was building to the memory of King Victor Em- 
manuel. The Egyptian obelisks, forty-five feet 
high, which stood before the entrance in the first 
century, now are to be found, one of them in front 
of the Quirinal Palace, — which is the royal resi- 



46 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

dence, — and the other one in the square by the 
great church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Thus, 
long ago rifled of its contents, the burial-place of 
the celebrated master of the ancient world has 
stood for centuries, broken and neglected. 

Since the time I was there, however, a new 
interest in it has awakened and a change has been 
made. The -circular interior has been cleared 
out, and furnished with platform and seats. It 
has become a place again of public entertain- 
ment and is known as The Augustean. Orchestral 
concerts of a high order are there performed. In 
the interlude of the music the visitor can ponder 
upon the march of the nineteen centuries which 
have passed away since the walls around him were 
erected. 

Augustus had been upon the throne about 
twenty-four years when Jesus was born. That holy 
Child had come to share our lot and to reveal 
clearly to men the knowledge of the Heavenly Fa- 
ther at a time when all its political kingdoms had 
thus become consolidated by force or treaty under 
one name of power, when better conditions and 
roads were preparing for the diffusion of Chris- 
tianity, and when men were beginning to dream 
that there might be such a thing as a common loy- 
alty to one great sovereign. Was it too difficult 
a step as yet for their minds to take from the 
contemplation of a universal dominion to the doc- 
trine of a universal brotherhood? The quiet and 
unobserved beginning of our Lord's spiritual and 



CL3ESAR AUGUSTUS 47 

gracious mission was thus put in striking contrast 
with the outward magnificence of the world's great 
conqueror, and the purely spiritual methods of the 
Gospel with the noisy forces of a ponderous army. 
When Augustus died Jesus was about eighteen 
years old. In a time of such infrequent communi- 
cation between distant places a quiet town in 
Galilee, like Nazareth, would have slight relations 
with any higher authority than Herod. Yet Jesus 
must have often seen in his boyhood Eoman mili- 
tary standards and groups of soldiers. He must 
have gazed with eager interest and curiosity upon 
their strong armor and shining weapons and 
watched with wonder their well-ordered move- 
ments. Roman coins must have been familiar 
objects to him, with their medal and superscrip- 
tions of the reigning monarch. He must have 
often discussed with his companions the various 
pieces of news that came from time to time from 
the great metropolis of the Empire. The death 
of the emperor in Italy, and the succession of 
Tiberius to the throne, as these were announced 
by couriers throughout the realm, must have 
stirred in him many serious reflections and ex- 
alted aspirations, many thrilling purposes of 
righteous zeal and tender love for men. Along 
with his gradual increase of knowledge as to the 
wide extent of Caesar's magnificent empire, there 
developed in his mind the sublime conception of 
the Kingdom of God, his prophetic vision of its 



48 UNDER (LESARS' SHADOW 

blessed sway, and his consciousness that he him- 
self was to be the Messianic King. 

Never will the thoughtful part of the world 
finish the study of that wonderful life, the child- 
hood and the youth of which were among the 
things that came to pass in the days of Caesar 
Augustus. 




Facing page 49 



TIBERIUS 



CHAPTER n 

TIBEKIUS: THE CJESAR OF CHRIST 's MINISTRY 

After Caesar Augustus came Tiberius Caesar. 
His father's name was Tiberius Claudius Nero. 
His mother was the famous Livia Drusilla. She 
was afterward taken away from her husband to 
become the wife of the Emperor Augustus, with 
whom, as we have already shown, she shared the 
honors and power of his distinguished career. 
Tiberius and his full brother Drusus, — younger 
than himself, — became, therefore, the stepsons of 
Augustus. 

While still a youth Tiberius appeared in honor 
upon several occasions, and once he made a plea 
before the emperor in behalf of the King Arche- 
laus and the Thessalians. Later he became also 
the son-in-law of Augustus, by his marriage to 
Julia, his stepsister. To accomplish this, and 
thus obey the command of Augustus, Tiberius 
separated from his first wife, Vipsania, with 
whom always, however, his heart remained. Sue- 
tonius tells us that one day afterward, when he 
accidentally met her, his eyes filled with tears and 
followed her as long as she was in sight. This 

49 



50 UNDER OESARS' SHADOW 

pathetic incident does much to increase our in- 
terest in him. 

His brother Drusus, to whom he was much at- 
tached, died in the year 9 B. C. when he was in 
military service on the banks of the Rhine. Bring- 
ing back his body to Rome, Tiberius walked on 
foot before the funeral train all the long journey. 
Augustus gave to him also the honorable mission 
of going to receive from the Parthians the mili- 
tary standards that Crassus had lost in war with 
that people, but which they were now willing to 
restore. 

Tiberius performed with energy every duty that 
Augustus assigned to him. He rapidly, therefore, 
received military promotion. For thirty years he 
was a prominent and skillful general and acquired 
much experience in public affairs. He was strict 
in military discipline and a good administrative 
officer. He was sent across the Rhine nine times 
on important missions. Many believed him to 
possess those stern, Roman qualities that would 
fit him for the highest position. His temper, how- 
ever, was somewhat surly and, like many of his 
contemporaries, he seems to have had little reluc- 
tance to shed blood. 

He was admitted to an important and special 
share of the government two years before the 
death of Augustus. He was thirty-five years old 
when he came to the throne. His accession was 
quietly brought about by the careful management 



THE (LESAR OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 51 

of his mother, Livia, by the support of the army, 
and by the acquiescence of the people. 

The inheritor of a vast empire from his prede- 
cessor, Tiberius had at the outset much to do to 
keep its various parts in subordination. For 
some time he avoided foolish extravagance and 
insisted upon order and efficiency in the various 
departments. He defeated the plans of the 
enemies who had plotted against him, and showed 
much decision and firmness. He did not allow 
himself in the first years of his reign to come into 
conflict with the senators, and conciliated them in 
various ways. He was very obsequious, at the 
same time, to the wishes of his ambitious mother, 
Livia, who had always been watchful of his in- 
terests, and who was a great helper to his plans. 
The first nine years of his reign he was a con- 
servative ruler. If he had died within that period 
he might have been rated by posterity as an in- 
dustrious and patriotic monarch. 

But even during that time he was unlike Au- 
gustus, in that he had none of those striking 
qualities that appeal to the sentiment and imagi- 
nation of the people. He had no personal magnet- 
ism. He led in no great enterprises. He cared 
neither to provide nor to attend exciting gladia- 
torial shows. On the other hand, he was often 
gloomy and irritable, cynical in judgment, and 
fearful of the malice of his enemies. This tend- 
ency was afterward increased by disappointments 
in his domestic life, His marriage with Julia, the 



52 UNDER (LESARS' SHADOW 

daughter of Augustus, owing to her bad character, 
proved to be unfortunate and unhappy. He 
turned against her, and fifteen years of later ex- 
perience in life could not soften his attitude 
toward her. 

The victories, triumphs, and death of his 
nephew, Germanicus, the son of his brother 
Drusus, occurred during his reign. Germanicus 
was a great soldier, a man of interesting char- 
acter, and a sort of popular idol. While the 
people were giving themselves up to mourning 
over his death, Tiberius told them that both they 
and he should find the best consolation in attend- 
ing to their regular duties. This seemed to them 
to be a very cold treatment of the occasion and 
confirmed their suspicions that the emperor had 
been jealous of Germanicus. It lessened his hold 
upon the affections of the people, although, to 
please them, he caused the arrest of Craeus Piso, 
who was suspected of having poisoned Germani- 
cus, and who committed suicide before he was 
sentenced. 

At the same time Tiberius was completing the 
concentration of power in his own hands and 
began to employ delators, or spies, that he might 
detect and punish the beginnings of all plots 
against himself. He was suspicious of his sub- 
jects at Rome. "I have a wolf by the ears," he 
said, referring to the great body of the people. 
This being his attitude of mind toward them, it 
is not strange that they lost for him their love and 



THE 03ESAR OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 53 

loyalty. His son, another Drusus, who had grown 
to be about thirty years old, was now associated 
as a consul of the empire with him. 

The career of Tiberius rose to a certain height 
and then gradually declined. The turning-point 
was when he received into his intimate confidence 
an infamous adviser named Sejanus. He trusted 
this man more than he did the experienced officers 
of his realm. Sejanus was utterly selfish and cor- 
rupt, and willing to stop at no point in his domina- 
tion of the emperor's mind. Tiberius began to 
manifest a depressed and morose spirit. He fre- 
quently retired to the island of Capri, near 
Naples, for relief and recuperation. There, upon 
the high cliffs, amid beautiful scenery and the 
soft breezes of a salubrious climate, he made for 
himself extensive gardens and villas and gathered 
around him servile flatterers, who ministered to 
his vanity and catered to his caprices. He was 
fascinated by oriental superstitions and employed 
many sorcerors and magicians. Juvenal pictures 
the scene of the emperor sitting on a rock of 
Capri with his "Chaldeans" (that is, sooth- 
sayers) around him. 

Tiberius continued in a large measure to direct 
through others the affairs of the empire. His 
son, Drusus II, proved to be a man of ability and 
discharged well the duties that were laid upon 
him. But Sejanus was made prefect and had the 
control of the city and of the Pretorian guard. It 
was Sejanus who took the bold step of bringing 



54 UNDER C^SARS' SHADOW 

all the soldiers of that guard, — nine or ten thou- 
sand in number, — together into one camp, where 
they could be more at his own bidding. This 
camp was on the northeast border of Rome, where 
the square projection in the line of the walls still 
indicates its large proportions. Of course Drusus 
was in the way of Sejanus' unprincipled ambi- 
tions; so the latter insidiously managed to gain 
influence over the wife of Drusus ; and these two, 
Sejanus and this woman, together poisoned the 
promising heir to the throne. Tiberius was deceit- 
fully told that the prince Drusus had died from 
sickness only. It was a severe blow to his fondest 
hopes. He manifested great grief before the 
Senate and mournfully declared that he must now 
transfer his hopes to the youthful children of 
Germanicus. 

Meanwhile jealousies and recriminations pre- 
vailed between Tiberius and his mother Livia as 
one party, and Agrippina, the widow of Grermani- 
cus and granddaughter of Augustus, as the other. 
Agrippina was living at Rome with her fatherless 
children, among whom was a third Drusus, a 
Nero, and a Caius. Caius, under the name of 
Caligula, was destined to be the next emperor. 
Sejanus fostered this quarrel for his own ends. 
He also encouraged the emperor in his deliberate 
purpose to make his permanent residence in the 
island of Capri, which Tiberius did soon after. 
There the luxurious seclusion of the emperor was 
guarded with the strictest vigilance; but day by 




Facing page 54 



DRUSUS 



THE (LESAB OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 55 

day a regular service of couriers brought dis- 
patches to him from the continent and from Rome. 
His commands, in turn, were transmitted to the 
capital city. 

Not long afterward Livia, the mother of the 
emperor and the widow of Augustus, — from whose 
somewhat officious oversight Tiberius had effected 
his escape by retiring to Capri, — died at the ad- 
vanced age of eighty-six, having held for seventy 
years nearly as much influence as any other per- 
sonage in the Roman court. She had been also 
called Julia Augusta, on account of her marriage 
to Augustus and her admission to the Caesarian 
family. She had combined ambition with pru- 
dence, great ability with virtue and benevolence. 
At her obsequies Caius, the youngest of the sons 
of Germanicus, pronounced the eulogy. 

In my sketch of the life of Augustus I have 
described some of the apartments of Livia's house, 
with their ancient beautiful frescoes, which are 
still to be seen among the ruins on the Palatine 
Hill. Not far from the beginning of the Appian 
"Way the tourist, after nearly nineteen centuries, 
also visits, with curiosity and wonder, a colum- 
barium, or great burial vault, so called from the 
niches in the walls resembling those of dovecotes, 
in which are believed to repose the ashes of 
Livia 's numerous attendants, slaves and f reed- 
men, said to be more than a thousand in number. 
This gives some idea of the opulence in which she 
lived. 



56 UNDER OESARS' SHADOW 

It now remained for the unprincipled Sejanus 
to get rid of Agrippina, — the widow of Germani- 
cus, — and her children, who caused him great un- 
easiness. By his exaggerated accusations, Tibe- 
rius was induced to send word to the Senate that 
they must arrest and condemn them. In spite of 
earnest opposition from the people, this was done. 
Agrippina was sent into exile in the island of 
Pandataria, now called Ventotienne, where she 
is said to have starved herself to death in the year 
A. D. 33, — the year of Christ's crucifixion. Her 
son Nero was sent into another island, called 
Pontia. Another son, Drusus, was thrown into 
prison at Rome. All of these afterwards came to 
miserable deaths as the result of their ill treat- 
ment. But another son, Caius by name, was 
fortunate enough to be looked on with more favor 
by the emperor and to be kept by his side at the 
imperial resort in the island of Capri. 

Sejanus, seeming now to be in full power, was 
made consul by the emperor, to serve along with 
himself. But it was not a great while before the 
tide turned. Tiberius discovered the utter hollow- 
ness and treachery of this man, so that in a time 
when he least expected it Sejanus was summoned 
before the Senate at Rome, the charges of the 
emperor against him were read, and he was 
thrown into the Mamertine prison. Upon others 
also, besides Sejanus, the wrath of Tiberus fell. 

Then, disappointed by those in whom he had 
trusted, and embittered by his own successes in 



THE CLESAB OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 57 

tyranny, hie began to divert himself at Capri with 
debasing pleasures. He seemed to have thrown 
off all the restraint of decency and to have given 
, himself up with his boon companions to the 
wildest orgies of dissipation and vice. His ancient 
biographers paint these scenes of his life in the 
darkest colors. He had broken all the fair 
promises of his earlier days and, instead of a 
painstaking ruler, had become a self-indulgent, 
besotted, and vindictive old man. The most 
charitable view that can be taken of his life at 
Capri is that his mind had become weakened by 
his gloomy suspicions, by his absolute authority 
and by his uncontrollable appetites. 

Milton in his "Paradise Regained,' ' when he 
represents Satan as tempting Christ with "all the 
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them," 
represents the former as saying : 

"All nations now to Rome obedience pay; 
To Rome's great emperor, whose wide domain, 
In ample territory, wealth and power, 
Civility of manners, acts and arms 
And long renown, thou justly may'st prefer 
Before the Parthian. . . . 
This emperor hath no son and now is old, 
Old and lascivious and from Rome retired 
To Caprese, an island small but strong 
On the Campanian shore, with purpose there 
His horrid lusts in private to enjoy, 
Committing to a wicked favorite 
All public cares, and yet of him suspicious, 
Hated of all and hating. With what ease, 
Endued with regal virtues as thou art, 
Appearing and beginning noble deeds, 
Might 'st thou expel this monster from his throne, 
Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending, 
A victor people free from servile yoke ! ' ' 



58 UNDER (LESABS' SHADOW 

It was certainly a very subtle form of tempta- 
tion to suggest to a noble mind, the thought of 
supplanting a monarch who had become so repro- 
bate and vile. 

The youth and early manhood of the famous 
writer and philosopher, Lucius Annseus Seneca, 
fell within the twenty-three years of the reign of 
Tiberius. He had been born seven years before 
the Christian era, at Cordova, in Spain. His 
father was a man of knightly rank; and his 
mother, Helvia, a Spanish lady, is praised by her 
son for the nobilitv and sweetness of her char- 
acter. They were people of wealth, and had culti- 
vated tastes. 

When Seneca was still a babe only two years old 
the family migrated to Rome. He had two 
brothers, — Marcus Annseus Novatus and Lucius 
Annseus Mela, The latter was the father of 
Lucan, the poet of Rome's declining literature. 
The former is known in history as Julius Gallio, 
a name which he took when adopted by an orator 
of that name. It was the same Gallio who became 
deputy of Achaia in Greece and before whom 
the Apostle Paul was dragged at Corinth by the 
Jews, who were indignant at his success in preach- 
ing. When some Greeks seized Sosthenes, the 
ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the 
judgment seat, Gallio " cared for none of those 
things. ' ' How little he dreamed that the one thing 
that would keep his name before the ages would 
be the fact that a Christian Jew, obscure at that 



THE (LESAR OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 59 

time, was brought for a few moments before his 
tribunal ! But he was popular in his day for his 
culture and refinement and was called dulcis 
Gallio, — the sweet Gallio. 

Seneca had the best educational advantages of 
his times. He studied rhetoric and philosophy. 
From Sotion, a Pythagorean, he imbibed the doc- 
trine of the transmigration of souls, and from 
Attalus, the Stoic, a hatred of "vice, of error, and 
of the ills of life." He learned in theory to 
commend poverty, to despise luxury, and to de- 
clare that the mind should be superior to its sur- 
roundings. He was too far from Palestine to 
have been brought in contact with the ministry 
there of Christ and of his apostles, but it is strik- 
ing to remember (and here we may quote the 
language of Dean Farrar) that "amid all the 
guilty and stormy scenes in which his earlier 
destiny was cast there lived and taught in Pales- 
tine the Son of God, the Saviour of the Wo rid.' 9 
While the young Seneca was being guarded by his 
attendant slave through the crowded and danger- 
ous streets of Rome on his way to school Saint 
Peter and Saint Andrew were fisher lads by the 
shore of Lake Gennesareth; while Seneca was 
ardently assimilating the doctrine of Attalus, 
Saint Paul with no less fervency of soul sat learn- 
ing at the feet of the Rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusa- 
lem, and long before Seneca had made his way 
through paths dizzy and dubious to the zenith of 



60 UNDER CLSJSABS' SHADOW 

his fame, the Saviour of men, unknown to him, 
had been cruelly crucified. 

Seneca's writings during the life of Tiberius 
were chiefly on subjects drawn from nature and 
on India and Egypt, — countries in which he had 
been traveling. He won a high reputation in 
literature. He had little to do with the imperial 
court. He was not brought into any personal re- 
lation with the emperor Tiberius, but not infre- 
quently in his pages refers to that "brutal mon- 
ster " and to the dangerous power of his prime 
minister, Sejanus. We shall hear more of Seneca 
farther on. 

While a few men such as Seneca were beginning 
to reach after higher things, the reign of Tiberius 
was, on the whole, a period of dark skepticism, of 
degraded morals, of manifold intrigues. Thought- 
ful persons had lost faith in the old mythology, 
the conventional paganism. Many were longing 
for something better. Many had settled into the 
worst pessimism. Various dreadful tragedies 
went on in high life at Rome. There was a great 
deal of contention, and much confusion among all 
orders of citizens. Accusations and suspicions 
were everywhere rife. 

Twice during his residence at Capri Tiberius 
determined to go back to Rome. Each time he 
started from that mountainous island to make 
the journey. He pursued it until he had come 
near the imperial city. Then, without entering 
Rome, he, in each case, took a meditative view of 



THE OESAR OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 61 

its walls and buildings and turned back, terrified, 
it was reported, by some evil omen. The last 
time, as be was retracing bis route through Cam- 
pania, he was taken ill at Asturia. At Cerceii he 
presided at festive sports in the military camp, 
even casting with his own hand javelins at wild 
beasts, which were driven before his seat in the 
amphitheater. 

But this was too much for his physical strength. 
Though he reached Misenum near Puteoli, he 
could go no farther. There he died in A. D. 37, 
when he was seventy-eight years old, at the close 
of a reign of twenty years. His funeral was soon 
after conducted with formal pomp by his suc- 
cessor, and his body was laid in the mausoleum of 
Augustus, at Rome. 

Such was the emperor within the limits of whose 
administration fell the greater part of the youth 
and all the public ministry of Jesus Christ. It 
seemed as if in his person selfish power was al- 
lowed to run to every excess before divine mercy 
should make its great manifestation and self-sac- 
rifice for mankind. 

We read in Luke's third chapter that it was in 
the fifteenth year of this Tiberius Caesar that 
John the Baptist began to preach in all the coun- 
try about Judea. As Jesus was " about thirty 
years old" when he came to John to be baptized, 
we suppose Luke's reckoning to be made from 
the time that Tiberius became associated with 
Augustus in the government. In that dark age 



62 UNDEE (LESAKS' SHADOW 

there were many who were defying God and 
going to every extreme of injustice and vice, but 
there were others who were "waiting humbly and 
prayerfully for the consolation of Israel." How 
startling to the former and how welcome to the 
latter must have been the great forerunner's cry 
echoing in the wilderness of Judea: "Prepare ye 
the way of the Lord and make his paths straight I ' ' 
Among the people who went out to hear John were 
some of the soldiers of Tiberius, who were then 
stationed in Palestine. 

"What shall we do?" they asked. 

"Do violence to no man, neither accuse any 
falsely, and be content with your wages," was his 
reply. 

Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, 
had been the tetrarch or ruler of Galilee under 
the Roman emperor since the death of his father. 
In his courageous zeal, John the Baptist did not 
hesitate to rebuke even this Herod Antipas, be- 
cause he was then scandalously living with 
Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. John, 
therefore, was hated and thrown into prison, and 
there remained until he was cruelly beheaded at 
the request of Herodias, through her daughter, 
who had pleased this Herod by her dancing in the 
revels of his birthday feast. 

When Jesus had begun his ministry in Galilee, 
Herod hearing about him, said : 

"John have I beheaded, but who is this of whom 



THE C^SAR OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 63 

I hear such things? It is John the Baptist who 
has risen from the dead." 

And he desired to see Jesus. 

On another occasion some Pharisees came to 
Jesus saying: 

i l Get thee out and depart hence, for Herod will 
kill thee." 

And he said unto them : 

"Go ye and tell that fox, Behold I cast out 
devils and do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the 
third day I shall be perfected. 9 ' 

Herod's desire to see Jesus was afterward 
gratified in very remarkable circumstances. He 
was temporarily in Jerusalem, having come south 
from his city Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, when 
Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, the 
Roman governor of Judea. Hearing that Jesus 
was from Galilee, Pilate tried to turn the case 
away and put the responsibility of deciding it 
upon Herod by sending Jesus to him for examina- 
tion. But Jesus would not answer Herod's inter- 
rogations; and so, after ill-treatment by Herod's 
guards, he was sent back to Pilate, who had to 
make the decision after all. He passed judgment 
in spite of his hypocritical washing of his hands 
in the presence of the mob. 

We learn from secular history that one cause of 
the unpopularity of Pilate with the people was 
that, in removing some Roman troops from 
Cesarea to Jerusalem, he had tried to bring into 
the holy city the military standards that bore the 



64 UNDER CJESAES' SHADOW 

image of the emperor Tiberius. The old religious 
feelings of the Jews against any representation of 
the human figure, especially when, as in this case, 
it tended to idolatry, was roused to the utmost; 
and their remonstrance had to be heeded. So 
stirring were the events in Jerusalem taking 
place while Tiberius was emperor at Rome. 

It was the face of Tiberius, or of his predeces- 
sor Augustus, that was on the Roman " penny' ' 
or denarius that Jesus once asked to be shown to 
him. Seeking a pretext for accusing him before 
the Roman authorities, his foes had inquired of 
him: 

"Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or not?'' 

Looking at the denarius, Jesus said : 

"Render unto Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's !" 

The government of Tiberius had, indeed, a 
claim upon the tribute of its citizens, who enjoyed 
its protection and used its coin: but that claim 
should never interfere with their obligations to 
the Supreme Ruler of all consciences. 

Again, when the Jewish rabble tried to over- 
come the scruples of Pilate by shouting : 

"If thou let this man go thou art not Caesar's 
friend," it was to the fear of Tiberius in Pilate's 
heart that they appealed. Centurions, or cap- 
tains of a hundred men in the army of Tiberius, 
appear in the scenes of the New Testament. It 
was the shadow of Tiberius over the land that 
was withholding from the Jews the right to 



THE (L3ESAR OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 65 

put any man to death. They had to look to the 
Roman authorities to do this; and then it was 
accomplished not by the Jewish method of stoning 
but by the Roman method of crucifixion. 

Those were Roman soldiers, "the whole band of 
them," at Jerusalem, who so heartlessly derided 
Jesus in the Governor's hall. We read that "they 
stripped him and put on him a scarlet robe." And 
when they had platted a crown of thorns, they 
put it upon his head and a reed in his right hand. 
And they bowed the knee before him and mocked 
him, saying: 

6 i Hail, King of the Jews ! ' f 

And they spit upon him and took the reed and 
smote him on the head. And after they had 
mocked him they took the robe off from him and 
put his own raiment on him and led him away to 
Golgotha, Those were Roman soldiers that drove 
the nails into his hands and feet. 

' ' They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with 
gall." 

They elevated him upon the cross, and then sat 
down to gamble for his raiment, while they cast 
occasionally a glance at his dying agonies. It was 
the Roman centurion, commanding these soldiers, 
who, seeing the earthquake and those things which 
were done, feared greatly, saying: 

"Truly, this was the Son of God!" 

Afterward it was a Roman soldier that thrust 
a spear into the side of the crucified, to make sure 
that he was dead, and it was a group of them that 



66 UNDER (LESAES' SHADOW 

were placed as a watch at the sealed tomb. One 
wonders if the miraculous facts about the life and 
death and resurrection of Jesus were ever fully 
reported to the emperor Tiberius and whether he 
ever gave any consideration to their deep 
significance. 

Tiberius was not a great builder as Augustus 
had been. Yet he built or enlarged the imperial 
palace on the Palatine. It was on the north corner 
of the hill and overlooked the Forum. Some 
ruins of it remain, as well as some of the villas 
that he erected on the island of Capri. There are 
said to have been ten of the latter. Statues and 
other relics of them now adorn the grounds and 
halls of modern summer resorts near the spots 
which he selected. A triumphal arch was erected 
in his honor in the Roman Forum. After him 
also was named the city of Tiberias, mentioned 
in John vi, 23, which was built by the tetrarch, 
Herod Antipas, to be the Roman capital of 
Galilee, and which was adorned with a palace and 
a stadium. On the edge of that Palestinian lake, 
which is sometimes called in Scripture the Lake 
of Gennesareth, sometimes the Sea of Galilee and 
sometimes, from this city, the Sea of Tiberias, 
the traveler finds to-day its modern representa- 
tive, broken and picturesque. 

It was to me a memorable night when, many 
years ago, I encamped, with some friends, among 
its ruins and watched the storm, which, as often 
in the days of Christ, had come up suddenly and 



THE (LESAR OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 67 

was raging on the waters. The fishermen, Simon 
and Andrew and James and John, as they plied 
their craft of old, could see across the waves the 
Avails of the palace by day and its gleaming lights 
by night. And not far away in the city of Caper- 
naum, on the shore of the same lake, Matthew, 
when he was an unpopular publican or tax-gath- 
erer, sat at the seat of the customs and took in 
the tribute money, which was for the treasury and 
government of Tiberius at Rome. 

It is not more than fifteen miles away over the 
hills to Nazareth, where Jesus was brought up; 
and we may well suppose that the wonderful boy 
sometimes came from there and looked down 
from the precipitous cliff into that deep natural 
basin where the lake lies and upon this city of 
Tiberias upon its bank. The shores were then 
inhabited by a great and busy population. About 
twelve miles long and six miles broad, it was then 
dotted by many a sail. Caravan roads connected 
its cities, and many races and languages were 
then represented there. Any youth from a rural 
home would take rich delight in coming thither 
and so getting into touch with the great outside 
world. And it was the scene of so much of his 
holy manhood's ministry that it seems almost a 
desecration that the name of Tiberias should also 
have been fastened there. It has now little more 
to attract the eye than the circling banks, the 
rippling waters and the blue haze on the sur- 
rounding hills. Yet to the Christian student, 



68 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

acquainted with its past and in love with the 
character of Him who lived and taught there, it 
has taken on an interest that belongs to no other 
locality on earth. 

"O Galilee! Bright Galilee! 
Hallowed thoughts we turn to thee. 
Woven through thy history 
Gleams the charming mystery 
Of the life of One who came, 
Bearing grief, reproach and shame, 
Saviour of the world to be, 
God with us by Galilee ! ' ' 

It is thought to have been in the reign of Tibe- 
rius that the two granite obelisks, known as Cleo- 
patra's Needles, which in the nineteenth century 
before Christ had been set up by Thothmes III, 
a monarch of Egypt, before the Temple of the 
Sun at Heliopolis, were removed to Alexandria 
and placed in front of a temple dedicated to 
Caesar. In our own time they have been carried 
very much further from their original location. 
One of them stands on the Victoria Embankment 
in London. The other is in Central Park, New 
York. The latter is 68y 2 feet high and nearly 8 
feet wide on each side of the base. Who knows 
but that Joseph and Mary on their flight with the 
sacred child into Egypt from Bethlehem looked 
with wonder on its curious hieroglyphics at Heli- 
opolis ? At any rate, as it stands now in the park 
of an American city, it is a venerable and heavy 
link between the life of to-day and far distant 
ages. 



THE CAESAR OF CHRIST'S MINISTRY 69 

Tiberius sits in the Vatican Museum. That is 
to say, his marble effigy does. It was discovered 
in modern times at Veii in Italy and has been 
pronounced by antiquarian experts to be a genuine 
representation of him. He appears as a young 
man of fine figure and handsome face. With his 
right hand he holds up a baton, with his left he 
grasps a sheathed dagger between his knees ; and 
this seems to be a fitting emblem, — though not 
perhaps intentional, — of his cruelty. Drapery is 
thrown over his shoulder and across his lap. On 
his head he wears a wreath. The ribbons that 
fasten it hang down behind his neck. His fore- 
head is intellectual. The hair is cut straight 
across it. The face is smoothly shaven. The lips 
are thin. The other features are of generous size. 
Some may discern in the figure the promise of a 
strength and wisdom, which, also, was not ful- 
filled. Others may see in the face only weakness 
and a consciousness of posing. At any rate, the 
statue helps us to make history real to the 
imagination. 

Why was this wicked man elevated to such 
honor and power? The thought comes to us that 
we have no such ancient portrait of the meek and 
lowly Saviour, who, while Tiberius was reigning, 
"went about doing good" and inviting the weary 
and heavy-laden to come to himself for rest. No 
sculptor from among Rome's eminent artists was, 
of course, ever commissioned with promise of rich 



70 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

reward to perpetuate in bronze or marble the 
form and features of the despised Nazarene. 

This is one of the many facts that remind us 
that the highest worth has often to wait long for 
its appreciation. But that appreciation will come 
at last. A few may turn aside from the busy 
streets of Rome to contemplate in the Vatican 
gallery this cold semblance of the unworthy man 
who petulantly ruled the world when the cruel 
cross was erected outside the walls of Jerusalem 
and when the yearning arms of Love Incarnate 
were stretched out in pain upon it. But the 
Victim on that cross has gloriously triumphed 
and has won His throne in millions of human 
hearts. 



-/* . 




Facing page 71 



CALIGULA 



CHAPTEE III 

CALIGULA, THE MADCAP 

The third Soman emperor was Caligula, His 
real name was Caius. He was a son of Germani- 
cus and Agrippina first, and a grandson of Dru- 
sus, who was a brother of the Emperor Tiberius. 
On his mother's side he was a great-grandson 
of Augustus. Tiberius seems to have preferred 
him for his successor to Tiberius Gemellus, his 
own grandson. 

Caius was brought up chiefly in the royal court 
and was, as we have seen, in company with Tibe- 
rius in much of the luxurious dissipation of that 
monarch's later days in the island of Capri. 
Pampered and flattered, it is not strange that he 
grew up conceited and arbitrary, — a spoiled 
child. 

It is said that when Caligula was a young boy he 
was dressed in miniature military accouterments, 
including the boots, and presented to the soldiers 
of the praetorian guard. This greatly pleased 
them, and drew from them the nickname of Calig- 
ula, which means " little boot." A bronze statue, 
found at Pompeii, represents him at about that 
time in his life, with his hair in long curls, orna- 

71 



72 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

ments of silver upon his cuirass, and his feet shod 
as indicated. As a youth he seemed to have had 
a weak constitution. He was very excitable and a 
poor sleeper. 

When he came to the throne he was for a short 
time diligent and thoughtful. He sailed to the 
island where his mother Agrippina I had perished 
and brought back her ashes to Rome for burial in 
the mausoleum of Augustus. A cippus, or monu- 
mental stone, set up among others in the city and 
erected probably by him, because mention is made 
on it of his accession to the throne, was hollowed 
out in the Middle Ages so as to be a standard 
measure for three hundred pounds of grain and 
as such was set up to be used by the public in the 
portico of the City Hall. It is now in the court of 
the Palace of the Conservatori on the Capitoline. 
Caligula introduced some measures of wise states- 
manship. Then he gained for himself great popu- 
larity by his fondness for public sports and his 
lavish expenditures on great gladiatorial shows, 
in which Tiberius had taken very little interest. 
There seems to have been a great deal of enter- 
prise and dash about him. 

But Caligula soon abandoned the spirit of dis- 
cretion and modesty. He showed no true interest 
for his subjects. Very few of them, however, knew 
of his unworthy tastes and conduct at Capri. He 
had been greatly influenced for evil by the com- 
panionship at court of Herod Agrippa, a grandson 
of Herod the Great, who had taken the name of 



CALIGULA, THE MADCAP 73 

Agrippa in compliment to Vipsanius Agrippa, the 
prime minister of Augustus. We shall later learn 
more of this Herod Agrippa I, for under the title 
of Herod the King it is he who appears in the 
twelfth chapter of the Acts. Agrippa had filled 
Caligula's mind with oriental ideas of what a 
monarch should be, namely, one who should make 
the people feel his absolute power and should 
dazzle them at times with great parades and 
startling spectacles. Accordingly, Caligula is 
reported to have said, "Let them hate me, if only 
they fear me." It became very soon evident that 
Caligula's vanity, arrogance, and cruelty would 
stop at no limits. He obliged Tiberius Gemellus, 
his rival for the throne, to commit suicide. He 
forced a similar fate upon other friends of Tibe- 
rius. His morals were execrable. His defiance of 
public opinion was shameless. He lived with his 
own sister Drusilla in a disgraceful manner and, 
when she died, decreed that she should be wor- 
shiped as a goddess. He successively took three 
wives from other men. 

He distributed crowns to foreign princes. 
Among these was his friend Herod Agrippa, 
whom he allowed to repair to his tetrachy in Pales- 
tine, going by the way of Alexandria. In that city 
Herod Agrippa 's presence was made the occasion 
of an insult to the Jews by the people of Alexan- 
dria, Their governor, Avilius Flaccus, knowing 
the repugnance of the Jews to all graven images, 
instigated the Alexandrians to demand that 



74 UNDER 033SARS' SHADOW 

statues of the emperor be set up in the syna- 
gogues. This pleased the intolerable arrogance of 
Caligula. Augustus and Tiberius had allowed 
themselves to be spoken of as divine in the prov- 
inces, but they had forbidden the worship of 
their pretended divinity at Rome during their 
lives. A deputation of Jews went to Rome to 
dissuade the emperor Caligula from sanctioning 
any such idolatries in regard to himself. They 
said they had prayed for him and had offered 
sacrifices for him, but they feared Jehovah as the 
only God. They were shocked by his blasphemy 
and returned disheartened when he replied : 

"Yes; you have offered sacrifices for me, but 
not to me." 

He, thereupon, issued his order that a statue of 
himself should be prepared to be worshiped even 
in the temple at Jerusalem. He went so far as to 
arrange for priests and sacrifices in his honor. 
The governor of Syria told the workmen to pro- 
ceed slowly upon this statue; so that it was not 
completed before Caius's death. 

Caligula seems really to have persuaded him- 
self that he was a god, not one of moral purity, 
but, according to his own depraved idea, a god of 
outward and sensuous power, — a Bacchus or a 
Hercules. He caused himself to be adored in the 
Forum. He showed himself to the people, sitting 
between the statues of Castor and Pollux in their 
temple. 

1 ' If you do not kill me I will kill you, ' ' he cried 



CALIGULA, THE MADCAP 75 

out to Jupiter in a thunderstorm, and then he 
ridiculously invented a machine for imitating 
thunder. He built some kind of a lofty passage- 
way, which was called a bridge, over the roofs of 
the houses from the Palatine to the Capitoline, so 
that he could go over and confer, as he said, with 
Jupiter in his temple. Merivale says that "to 
stand on the summit of a high basilica and scatter 
money to the populace seemed to him an act of 
divine munificence and to sail along the Campa- 
nian coast in enormous galleys equipped with 
porticos, baths, and banquet halls interspersed 
with gardens and orchards delighted him as a 
gorgeous parade and as a defiance to the ele- 
ments." He also constructed at great expense a 
bridge of boats across the bay from Baiae to 
Puteoli. This he did as a token of his power to 
win a victory even over the god Neptune himself. 
It was about two miles long. We may here quote 
again from Merivale : 

"He ransacked, we are told, the havens far and near to collect 
every vessel he could lay hands on till commerce was straitened in 
every quarter and Italy itself threatened with famine. These 
vessels he yoked together side by side in a double line extending 
from one shore to the other. On this broad and well-compacted 
base he placed an enormous platform of timber; this again he 
covered with earth and paved it after the manner of a military 
highroad with stones hewn and laid in cement. He determined 
to enact on it a peculiar pageant, the novelty and brilliancy of 
which should transcend every recorded phantasy of Kings or Em- 
perors. From Puteoli to Baiae the semicircle of the bay was 
crowded with admiring multitudes; the loungers of the baths and 
porticos sallied forth from their cool retreats; the promenaders 
of the Lucrine beach checked their palanquins and chariots and 
hushed the strains of their delicious symphonies; the terraces of 



76 TTNDEB C^SAES' SHADOW 

the gorgeous villas, which lined the coasts and breasted the fresh 
and sparkling ripples, glittered with streamers of a thousand 
colors and with the bright array of senators and matrons drown- 
ing the terrors of a popular uprising which day and night beset 
them, in shrieks of childish joy and acclamation. The clang of 
martial music echoed from shore to shore. From Bauli the em- 
peror descended upon the bridge, having first sacrificed to the 
gods, and chiefly to Neptune and Envy, arrayed in a coat of 
mail adorned with precious gems which had been worn by Alex- 
ander the Great, with his sword by his side, his shield on his 
arm, and crowned with a chaplet of oak leaves. On horseback, 
followed by a dense column of soldiers, he traversed the solid 
footway and charged into Puteoli as a conquering foe. There 
he indulged his victorious army with a day of rest and expecta- 
tion. On the morrow he placed himself in a triumphal car and 
drove back exulting in the garb of a charioteer of the Green at 
the games of the circus. The mock triumph of this entrance 
was adorned by pretended captives represented by some royal 
hostages from Parthia who were at the time in the custody of 
the Eoman government. The army followed in long procession. 
In the center of the bridge the emperor halted and harangued 
his soldiers on the greatness of their victory from a tribunal 
erected for the purpose. He contrasted the narrow stream of the 
Bosphorus and the Hellespont, only seven stades in width, with 
the broad ocean which he had yoked with chains; and declared 
that the exploits of Xerxes and Darius were trifles compared with 
his mightier enterprise. After wearying both himself and his 
hearers with this prodigious folly he distributed money among 
them and invited them to a banquet. At nightfall the bridge 
and the ships were illuminated with torches and at the signal 
the whole curving line of the coast shone forth, as in a theater, 
with innumerable lights." 

All this was simply useless extravagance, the 
wild freak of a madman, the whim of a childish 
tyrant who confounded arbitrary power and 
splendor with divinity. He did not know of any 
better way of proving himself to be godlike. 

It is possible that some thought of all this blas- 
phemous arrogance may have been in the Apostle 
Paul's mind when, in 2 Thess. ii, 4, he pictures 
"the man of sin" to be revealed, as one "who 



CALIGULA, THE MADCAP 77 

opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is 
called God or that is worshiped; so that he as 
God sitteth jm the temple of God showing himself 
that he is God." 

In order to keep up his assumed character of a 
god, Caligula had to accomplish, of course, many 
mighty things. He completed the temple of Au- 
gustus at Rome. He enlarged the imperial resi- 
dence on the Palatine with oriental extravagance, 
connecting by descending porticos the palace of 
Tiberius with the temple of Castor and Pollux. 
He projected, and perhaps commenced, the great 
Claudian aqueduct. He brought from Egypt and 
erected in the Vatican circus the immense granite 
obelisk, one hundred and thirty-two feet high, 
which now stands in front of St. Peter's, not very 
far, indeed, from the locality where he placed it. 

But Caligula was so jealous of other men that 
he caused many statues and monuments that had 
been erected by Augustus to be thrown down and 
so broken that the names could not be restored to 
the figures. He was so consumed with envy that 
he had a passion for destroying every well-earned 
reputation. He forbade the circulation of the 
writings of Virgil, of Livy, and of other famous 
authors whom Augustus had fostered, and of 
whom the people were proud. He even threatened 
to abolish the laws and make his own word and 
will the rule for mankind. No personal excel- 
lence could escape his erratic hostility. 

It was inevitable that he should look with hatred 



78 UNDER CLESARS' SHADOW 

upon the popularity of the distinguished Seneca. 
This writer and philosopher we have referred to 
as winning public approval in the days of Tibe- 
rius. He had become a great advocate and was 
beginning to express exalted opinions. Caius 
prided himself on his brilliant wit, of which, in- 
deed, a few illustrations have come down to us; 
but he could not tolerate such a noble and talented 
man as Seneca. He was so displeased with him 
that he singled him out for immediate execution ; 
but one of the emperor's favorites whispered to 
him that he need not take the trouble to extinguish 
an expiring lamp, Seneca was in such poor health 
at the time. So Seneca escaped, but withdrew 
into obscurity for the rest of the reign of Caius 
and devoted himself to his studies and medita- 
tions. He abhorred the conduct of the emperor. 
He speaks of "wretches doomed to undergo 
stones, sword, fire, and Caius"; and described 
Caius as one whose "face was ghastly pale with a 
look of insanity, his eyes half hidden under a 
wrinkled brow; his ill-shaped head was partly 
bald, partly covered with dyed hair, his neck 
covered with bristles, his legs thin and his feet 
misshapen." On the other hand Caius called 
Seneca's writings "mere displays" and "sand 
without lime. ' ' 

This emperor spent fabulous sums on extra- 
ordinary entertainments. It was the custom of 
the times for the vulgar rich to lay out enormous 
amounts of money upon the decorations and lux- 



CALIGULA, THE MADCAP 79 

urious provisions of their tables, and Caligula was 
not to be surpassed in this regard by any of them. 
Viands were set before his guests with fantastic 
display, chiefly on account of their rarity and 
costliness. The brains of peacocks and the 
tongues of nightingales and flamingoes, besides 
rare birds from distant regious, were only speci- 
mens of the extravagant dishes, while pearls dis- 
solved by powerful acids placed in the wine 
seemed to give an additional relish to the foolish 
prodigality. He had the most richly furnished 
banquet-halls, the most elaborate furniture, and 
the most exquisite music that the empire could 
furnish. 

He was fond of imposing military demonstra- 
tions. He celebrated with great pomp a barren 
victory over the Germans. He made ridiculous 
boasts over an invasion of Great Britain, an in- 
vasion that was abandoned not far from that 
country's shores. 

The people soon became very tired and dis- 
gusted with Caligula's revels and dissipations. 
His extravagance, of course, required increased 
taxation, and his capricious cruelty put every 
man's life in jeopardy. He seemed to delight in 
causing suffering. It is declared that he told his 
executioners to strike in such a manner that their 
victims might feel themselves dying, and that 
once, when a sufficient number of animals was 
wanting, he commanded some of the spectators in 
the amphitheater to be thrown to the wild beasts. 



80 UNDER (LESAKS' SHADOW 

His imagination seems to have had a tendency to 
dwell on cruel and grewsome thoughts, as the fol- 
lowing quotation will show : 

1 ' One day at a public banquet, when the consuls were reclining 
by his side, he burst suddenly into a fit of laughter and, when 
they courteously inquired the cause of his mirth, astounded them 
by coolly replying that he was thinking how by one word he 
could cause the heads of both of them to roll on the floor. He 
amused himself with similar banter even with his wife Caesonia, 
for whom he seems to have had a stronger feeling than for any 
of his former consorts. While fondling her neck, he is reported 
to have said, 'Fair as it is, how easily I could sever it! ' He 
did not content himself with such fancies. Too often they were 
followed by actual cruelty and bloodshed, so that few could laugh 
at his joking. There was no telling how he would shock the 
public next. " 

1 ' This prince, ' ' said Seneca, ' ' only lived to show 
what the greatest vices could do in the circum- 
stances of the highest fortune." 

It niav be asked: Where was the Roman 
Senate? Had it no power in the time of such pub- 
lic distress? The senators had more power than 
they had courage to exercise. They were weak 
and vacillating, each man fearing for his own life. 
They were often struck dumb by his imperious 
and remorseless demands, but the next day they 
would meet and pay servile court to him. 

It was fortunate that Caligula's reign was not 
long. It lasted less than four years. The sup- 
pressed and muttering storm of popular indigna- 
tion was long reaching its chmax. But at last the 
outburst came, and the merciless lightning fell. 
He had presided on a certain occasion at the games 



CALIGULA, THE MADCAP 81 

at the foot of the Palatine. At the hour of inter- 
mission and rest he allowed most of his guard to 
go up into the palace by the open way, while he 
entered through the cryptoporticus, — a long 
tunnel-like passageway under the building, the 
same one through the shadows of which the 
modern visitor to the Palatine Hill now generally 
passes. Hither Cassius Chorea, a tribune of the 
Guard, whom Caligula had insulted by mockingly 
imitating his squeaky voice, followed him, with 
others, and arresting his steps, suddenly struck 
him upon the head with a sword. Blow followed 
blow till life was extinct. The bearers of his 
litter had run to his assistance with their poles, 
while his small body-guard of Germans had struck 
wildly at the assassins. But these assassins made 
their escape from the narrow passage, and left the 
body where it fell. It was borne in secret by 
friendly hands to a place of cremation, where it 
was only partially consumed. Later his sisters, 
Livia and Agrippina II, reduced it completely to 
ashes, which they consigned to a decent sepulcher. 
The people must have breathed more freely 
when his death was announced, for they felt that 
nothing worse could follow and something better 
might. Caligula is not mentioned in the New Tes- 
tament, but he was carrying out his wild career 
while the Gospel was spreading from Jerusalem 
through Judea and Samaria and as far perhaps 
as to Antioch. The preaching of Peter and 
Philip and John, in Samaria, and the conversion 



82 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

of Saul of Tarsus at about that time would have 
had no interest for him if he had been told about 
it. 

There is a bronze bust of him in the Hall of the 
Emperors in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, 
from which we would suppose him to be somewhat 
good-looking. He had regular features and an 
intellectual head, but wore a sort of frown upon 
his brow. He did not part his hair. None of the 
first emperors seem to have done that ; so it was 
probably the fashion for other men not to do it. 
The bust represents him as wearing a corselet 
over the woven garment that falls in folds from 
his shoulders. There is some alertness and vigor 
in the face. Perhaps in his youth he was a pos- 
sible statesman. If so, he was badly spoilt by his 
early training in a hot-bed of corruption and 
sensuality. His name is a black spot upon the 
history of a period dark enough at best, and is 
never mentioned but to be despised. 




Facing page 83 



CLAUDIUS 



CHAPTER IV 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 



After Caligula's death the Senate was con- 
vened in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline 
Hill,— not in the accustomed Curia or Senate 
House, because that bore the now hated name of 
Julian from the family to which the slain emperor 
belonged. The body first of all issued decrees 
denouncing the tyranny of Caligula and giving 
honor to the "restorers of public freedom," as the 
assassins were called, and especially to the ring- 
leader of these, Chaerea, They also granted a re- 
mission of some of the most unpopular taxes that 
Caligula had enforced. Some were ready to vote 
that the memory of the Caesars should be entirely 
abolished and that the government should be re- 
stored to the simple republican form it had in the 
days of the Scipios and Cato. Others thought that 
the monarchy should be continued, but in an en- 
tirely different family line. 

Chaerea, emboldened by his public honors, gave 
orders to a military tribune, who hastened to put 
to death Caligula's wife and only child. It was 
properly a question for the Senate to decide, — 
who should be the successor to the imperial 

83 



84 UNDER (LSESAKS' SHADOW 

throne. While that body was deliberating, the 
matter was summarily settled by the action of the 
Praetorian Guards. In the general confusion some 
of them had begun plundering the imperial palace. 
There they had found, half -hidden behind a cur- 
tain in an obscure corner, a man about fifty-five 
years old, whom they recognized as Claudius, the 
son of Drusus and the uncle of Caligula. He sank 
at their feet probably expecting nothing but death. 
But they dared not do otherwise than respect the 
blood of the Caesars. They were more loyal than 
the great body of the Senators to the royal family. 
So they hailed Claudius as emperor and carried 
him, astonished and protesting, to their camp. 
When in the morning it was found that the Senate 
had come to no conclusion, Claudius found cour- 
age to allow the soldiers to have their way and to 
swear allegiance to him. In return for their de- 
votion he promised them a large donation in 
money. 

Herod Agrippa I, who had been such a friend 
of Caligula and who was still in Rome, advised 
the Senators that the wisest thing that they could 
do would be to yield to the wishes of the soldiers. 
This was an act for which, as we shall see, he was 
afterward generously rewarded by Claudius. In 
spite of some determined opposition, therefore, he 
was proclaimed the successor to the throne, the 
first of many Roman emperors who owed their 
elevation to the military power of the praetorian 
guard. 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 85 

Claudius was born at Lugdunum, or Lyons, in 
Gaul, August first, in the year 9, or 10, before 
Christ. From his childhood he seems to have been 
weak in body and retiring in spirit. He had been 
neglected, if not despised, by the great Augus- 
tus. His own parents had been ashamed of him 
as a feeble invalid. He had not been thought of 
as worthy to fill any high office at the imperial 
court. He had once asked the emperor Tiberius 
for larger responsibilities, but had received 
scarcely more than empty honors. He is said to 
have had some form of paralysis, to have trembled 
in his hands and to have had an imperfect utter- 
ance. Caligula had elevated him to the consul- 
ship and had given him an honorable seat at 
public spectacles; but in private he had been 
made the butt of coarse jokes and of much ridi- 
cule. He had resigned himself, therefore, to quiet 
pursuits, had settled down to the opinion that 
there were no great things for him in life, and had 
turned his attention to literary studies. He was 
the author, with some assistance, of several his- 
torical volumes and of a life of Cicero. He may 
have been, for that period, a fair sort of citizen, 
and when he was made emperor it was certainly 
an agreeable change for the people from the out- 
rageous extravagancies of Caligula. 

At the outset of his reign he modified some of 
the harsh enactments of his predecessors; re- 
turned to their owners several private estates, 
which had been confiscated ; gave back to various 



86 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

cities the statues of heroes, which had been re- 
moved from them, and restored the temples, which 
Caligula had desecrated, to their original uses. 
He also executed the murderer of Caligula. Fear- 
ing violence, he caused his own person to be 
guarded. He respected the dignity of the Senate, 
made the Senators responsible for the discharge 
of their duties, and increased their number by 
promoting to that honor men from the equestrian 
rank. 

In this matter he did not confine his view to 
Italy but extended it to Gaul, the province in 
which he had been born. He made a speech in the 
Senate defending the measure. This speech was 
copied on brazen tablets and preserved by the 
people of Lugdunum (Lyons). One of these was 
discovered three centuries ago and is now to be 
seen, well preserved and clearly legible, in the 
museum of that city. He discontinued all en- 
couragement to spies and informers. He ordained 
that sick slaves abandoned in the temple of Escu- 
lapius should be free if they recovered. He pro- 
vided also for the amusements of the people, 
keeping up the popular gladiatorial shows and 
sometimes going as far as to bandy jokes with 
the bystanders about the performers. His re- 
sponsibilities developed in him unexpected inde- 
pendence and force ; and all these labors were not 
unfavorable to the improvement of his health. 

The Roman army was active at this time on the 
frontiers of Gaul and Germany. Claudius deter- 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 87 

mined to carry out the plan that Augustus had 
formed of invading Britain. He even entered that 
country in person, crossing the channel and join- 
ing the Eoman general, Aulus Plautius, in his 
campaign against the natives. He was absent 
from Rome six months and achieved such mili- 
tary success that on his return a public triumph 
was accorded to him by the Senate. On this 
occasion he added to his name the title Britanni- 
cus, which afterwards became also the special 
designation of his son. 

A little later in the reign of Claudius, Caracta- 
cus, a British chief, who had resisted the Roman 
forces, was captured and brought to Rome, with 
his wife and daughter. All at the imperial court 
were impressed with the noble bearing of this 
prisoner as he pleaded eloquently for his life. 
Claudius, let it be said to his credit, extended to 
him the imperial clemency. I shall have occasion 
to refer to the invasion of Britian by Claudius 
when I come to speak, in a later chapter, of Paul's 
friends at Rome and among them of the woman 
Claudia and her possible British origin and 
relations. 

Claudius was generous and tactful with the 
princes who were subject to the Roman empire. 
He established Antiochus in Comagene, Mithri- 
dates on the Bosphorus, for the favor I have men- 
tioned, and Herod Agrippa I in Galilee with Judea 
and Samaria added to his domain. It was during 
the reign of Claudius that this Herod Agrippa I 



88 UNDER (LESARS' SHADOW 

"stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the 
church," as Luke records for us in the twelfth 
chapter of the Acts. "And he killed James, the 
brother of John, with the sword. And because he 
saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to 
take Peter also." Peter was wonderfully de- 
livered from prison. But Herod was soon after 
smitten with a dreadful disease. It was when he 
had made a proud demonstration before the 
people, as is described to us in the same chapter 
as follows : 

Herod was highly displeased with them of Tyre and Sidon: 
but they came with one accord to him, and, having made Blastus 
the king's chamberlain their friend, desired peace; because their 
country was nourished by the king's country. And upon a set day 
Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne and made 
an oration unto them. And the people gave a shout, saying, "It 
is the voice of a god and not of a man." And immediately the 
angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the 
glory; and he was eaten of worms and gave up the ghost. But 
the word of God grew and multiplied. 

The famous cities of Treves in France, Cologne 
on the Rhine, and Colchester in England owe their 
origin to the reign of Claudius. The original 
name of Cologne was Colonia Agrippinensis for 
Agrippina, who was born in this vicinity. As 
empress she assumed a leadership in military mat- 
ters never before occupied by a woman, and made 
it her boast that she was the first of her sex thus 
to found a colony of Eoman veterans. Colchester, 
meaning the camp on the river Colne, was on the 
site of the ancient town of Camelodunum, the 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 89 

residence of the principal potentate of southern 
Britain, the chief of the Trinobantes. When these 
people were put to flight, Claudius established 
there a Roman camp and colony to keep them and 
the other barbarous tribes in awe. They were 
taught to ascribe the victory of the Romans to the 
favor of certain divinities ; and among the shrines 
erected in the colony was a temple of unusual size 
for the worship of Claudius himself. Such divine 
honors, we have seen, had sometimes been ac- 
cepted by his predecessors. Two miles of city 
walls and other relics dating from the period of 
the Roman occupation may still be seen at 
Colchester. 

From Caius Caligula, Claudius had received an 
exhausted public treasury and empty granaries. 
Scanty harvests produced several periods of 
famine in different parts of the world. Secular 
historians say that one of these occurred in Pales- 
tine and Syria during his reign. We read in Acts 
ii, 28, how such a famine was predicted by the 
prophet Agabus at Antioch, so that the disciples 
there determined to send relief to their brethren 
in Judea, which they did by the hands of Barnabas 
and Saul ; and the sacred writer says this famine 
occurred in the days of Claudius Caesar. As one 
of the means for bringing Egyptian wheat to 
Rome more quickly, and thus preventing such pe- 
riods of destitution of bread in the imperial city 
again, Claudius directed the building of a larger 
harbor at the mouth of the Tiber, an enterprise 



90 UNDER C^SARS' SHADOW 

that required much massive masonry and which 
for a long while facilitated the commerce of the 
empire. In course of time the action of stream 
and wind and tide has filled up and wellnigh oblit- 
erated it. He also in seven years carried on to 
completion the mighty aqueduct for bringing wa- 
ter to Rome from the Alban hills, — an engineer- 
ing achievement that has been always known as 
the Claudian Aqueduct. The traveler still won- 
ders at its great arches stretching across the 
lonely Campagna. Tunneling a mountain to af- 
ford a better outlet for Lake Fucinus was another 
great piece of engineering in his day, the comple- 
tion of which was fitly celebrated by naval evolu- 
tions and a sham battle on the Lake. 

If we could confine our view of Claudius to the 
facts now stated, we might think of him as one who 
in many respects quite disappointed the low esti- 
mate of him that the majority of men held at the 
beginning of his career. But, alas ! his great weak- 
ness lay in his proneness to be too easily duped 
and controlled by others. This was specially 
marked in the influence over him of his vicious 
wives. The first lady who was betrothed to him 
in his youth was repudiated by him because she 
was not approved by the emperor Augustus. The 
next died on the day appointed for the nuptials. 
The third, named Urgalania, became the mother 
of two children. One of these was choked to death 
by a pear he tried to swallow. Afterward Clau- 
dius divorced this wife, having discovered that 




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CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 91 

she was unfaithful; and he ordered her second 
child to be exposed to die. The next wife was also 
divorced as unsuitable. The last two were Messa- 
lina and Agrippina, both of whom, as we shall see, 
lived to acquire great infamy. 

Messalina, the granddaughter of Mark Antony, 
was married to Claudius when he had no prospect 
of coming to the throne. She is said to have been 
at that time only fifteen years old. She became an 
intensely ambitious woman, of no moral principle. 
She was particularly jealous of Julia and Agrip- 
pina, the two nieces of the emperor, who, like 
herself, were brilliant but wicked women. She 
had no respect for her husband, and when he be- 
came emperor used her position to gain her per- 
sonal ends. She was frightfully immoral. Her 
name, indeed, has become a byword for female 
depravity. She took bribes from others and 
wheedled presents from her husband. 

After the accession of Claudius, the philosopher 
Seneca had emerged from the obscurity into which 
the jealousy of Caligula had forced him. It would 
have been well for his own peace of mind if he 
had continued to pursue his reflections in private. 
It has been well said that all Seneca gained for 
himself from his career of ambition at court was 
to be suspected by one emperor, banished by a 
second, and murdered by a third. 

Claudius was not only under the influence of an 
infamous wife but he had also given himself 
largely to be controlled by certain evil men chosen 



92 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

from the ranks of freedmen. The lower class of 
Roman slaves had little hope of bettering their 
condition. But there was a higher class, princi- 
pally from Greece and Syria, who were finely 
trained and educated, and who could calculate on 
obtaining their freedom early in life, when they 
might come into many opportunities of being the 
favorite employees, if not the intimate counselors, 
of their former masters and others. Some of them 
were shrewd enough to rise to great distinction 
and power and figure prominently upon the pages 
of history. In the court of Claudius there were 
several freedmen of this character. There were 
Narcissus, his private secretary ; Polybius, his lit- 
erary adviser, and Pallas, his accountant. We may 
also include another freedman of whom we read 
in Scripture, Felix, the brother of Pallas, who be- 
came the procurator of Judea, before whom the 
Apostle Paul was arraigned. The first three of 
these men, if not the fourth, became noted for 
their accumulation of great riches and for their 
insolence. Some scholars, — such as Lightfoot and 
Ramsey, — have thought that the Narcissus we 
here speak of was the man some of the slaves of 
whose household were known to the Apostle Paul 
to be Christians and secured from him greetings 
in Romans xvi, 11. 

Narcissus, Polybius, and Pallas gradually came 
into control of the execution of the laws. Two of 
them, Narcissus and Pallas, acquired their wealth 
often by dishonest means. Once when Claudius 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 93 

complained that the imperial revenues were too 
small, it was replied that he would be rich enough 
if his two wealthy freedmen would take him into 
partnership. By their accusations they obtained 
from Claudius severe judgments on different in- 
dividuals whom they hated. He was aroused by 
them to put down some conspiracies against his 
own person, but seems scarcely to have been aware 
of many evils that were flourishing while he was 
maintaining the routine of government or presid- 
ing at splendid banquets. At these he disgraced 
himself by gluttony and intemperance. A stolid 
worker in his prime, he became a stupid dotard in 
his age. 

The Eoman court had now become so degener- 
ate that its record takes the form of a scandalous 
chronicle. It was surely a miserable place for a 
man to be found who put forth, as did Seneca, 
exalted apothegms of moral philosophy. Using 
opportunities for the investment of inherited 
wealth, he became extremely rich and, although he 
was one of the most enlightened men of his age, 
he had allowed himself to be placed in a most con- 
taminating environment. Perhaps it was his de- 
testation of the conduct of the empress that made 
him a partisan of her rivals, so that Messalina 
could find a pretext for accusing him of an in- 
trigue with Julia, Julia was exiled and then put 
to death. 

No positive evidence of Seneca's guilt has come 
down to us. On the contrary, he has been pro- 



94 UNDER (LESABS' SHADOW 

nounced innocent by some students of history. 
But he was condemned by the Senate and banished 
to the barren shores of Corsica. He tells us that 
Claudius tried to prevent this, but Messalina's 
schemes were too deeply laid to be thwarted. It is 
remarkable that Seneca does not abuse her in any 
of his writings that have come down to us. He 
bade farewell to his noble-minded mother and his 
beloved brother Grallio, to his nephew Lucan, the 
promising young poet, and to Marcus his little 
boy, and then left the city, banishment from which 
was the sorest of trials to a Roman. He retired 
to his place of exile. There, amid disagreeable 
surroundings, he consoled himself with his philos- 
ophy and wrote a "Consolation" to his mother, 
Helvia, which is one of the noblest of his works. 
It must, however, be admitted that his fine moral 
precepts did not prevent his writing a letter to 
Polybius in which he abjectly flatters Claudius, 
manifestly in order to secure his release and his 
return to Rome. If he expected this through the 
intervention of Polybius, he was disappointed, for 
that freedman and favorite, though he had for- 
merly much influence with Messalina, soon for- 
feited his life through her machinations. 

Messalina succeeded a long time in concealing 
her real character, but when her shamelessness 
reached its highest pitch in her open marriage to 
another man, the indignation of the emperor was 
aroused. Then followed a new scene of tragedy. 
She had apparently persuaded Claudius that it 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 95 

was a mock marriage for a frolic, but all Eome 
knew better and regarded it not only as a vile pro- 
cedure but an attempt to usurp the political 
throne. Some time before this, Messalina had 
coveted the gardens on the Pincian Hill, which had 
long been famous as the property of the luxurious 
Lucullus, and which at the present day may be a 
part of the grounds of the Villa Medici. After 
Lucullus it belonged to Valerius Asiaticus. So 
Messalina had suborned her son's tutor, Silius, 
to accuse Asiaticus of corrupting the army. Thus 
she secured his death and then took possession of 
the gardens. Here, as the wild revelries that 
followed the detestable wedding ceremonies were 
at their height, one of the guests, Vettius Valens, 
climbed to the top of a tree ; and, when they asked 
what he saw, he replied in language intended for 
a jest : 

"I see a fierce storm approaching from Ostia." 
It was well known that the emperor was at that 
place. The storm was indeed approaching. Mes- 
sengers soon arrived, saying Claudius was on the 
way. The news fell like a thunderbolt. Messa- 
lina implored the protection of Vibidia, the chief 
of the Vestal Virgins. With her children she 
hastened across the city to the Ostian gate to 
plead for the emperor's mercy on his arrival. 
She mounted the cart of a market gardener, which 
happened to be passing. But Narcissus absorbed 
the attention of the emperor as she approached by 
accounts of her crimes ; and Messalina was coldly 



96 UNDER OESARS' SHADOW 

passed by. That evening, as Claudius enjoyed 
the pleasures of his table, he showed some signs 
of softened feeling at mention of her. Narcissus 
knew that delay would be dangerous to himself. 
So he sent a tribune and centurions to kill the 
empress in the garden of Lucullus, to which she 
had returned. She was weeping in despair when 
the doors were battered down and the tribune and 
his men stood before her. She took a dagger in 
her hand and when she had twice stabbed herself 
in vain the tribune gave the fatal blow. In her 
death she has been well compared with Jezebel of 
old, who was slain on or near the ground she had 
wickedly taken from its owner. Claudius was still 
lingering at his dinner when he was informed that 
she had perished. He asked no questions and 
manifested no emotion. 

Not long after this the emperor married Agrip- 
pina II, the sister of Caligula, and the daughter 
of Germanicus and the older Agrippina. To dis- 
tinguish her from her mother she is generally 
called Agrippina the Second. She was a niece of 
Claudius. 

The marriage of such close relations was re- 
pugnant to most Romans. But the artful woman 
managed to overcome all objections, and the 
wedding took place. She had inherited none of 
the virtues of her distinguished parents, had been 
brought up by wicked relatives* and had been 
married to Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, one of 
the worthless young nobles of that day. By him 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 97 

she had one son, upon whom she lavished her 
natural affections. After her marriage to the 
emperor she worked constantly in the interests of 
this son, cherishing for him the greatest expecta- 
tions. One of her first steps was to secure his 
betrothal to Octavia, the daughter of the emperor. 
She also induced Claudius formally to adopt him 
into the Claudian family, to place him in the line 
of succession with his own son, Britannicus, and, 
inasmuch as he was three years older than Britan- 
nicus, to give him actual precedence in many 
honors. On this adoption the young man received 
a new name and became known as Claudius Do- 
mitius Nero. 

Agrippina also managed to get rid, — by banish- 
ment, disgrace, or death, — of one after another 
of the women who had been her rivals at the im- 
perial court. Among these were Lepida and Cal- 
purnia, Against the rich Lollia Paulina she 
brought a charge of sorcery and treason, and so 
obtained the confiscation of most of her property 
and her banishment from Italy. It is said that 
not even this satisfied her, but that she sent a 
tribune to bring her the head of her enemy, and 
that when it was laid before her she lifted the 
lips with her own hand to make sure, by marks 
on the teeth, of its identity. This horrid story 
is quoted by Merivale and others from the ancient 
historian, Dion. It has been well said that she 
must have even surpassed Lady Macbeth in her 
malignant and frigid cruelty. 



98 UNDER (LESAKS' SHADOW 

Tacitus says that it was with a hope of coun- 
teracting the unpopularity that these horrors had 
aroused in the public mind that Agrippina re- 
called Seneca from his exile in Corsica and made 
him the tutor of her son. Thus, again, was this 
great philosopher brought back into the scenes of 
court and the public life at Rome. And thus 
Agrippina would undo some of the work of Mes- 
salina, whom she had heartily hated. She may 
have been influenced also by the consideration 
that Seneca was indignant with Claudius, and this 
might make him more helpful to her and to her 
son if any antagonism should arise between her 
and her husband. Of course, it would have been 
better for Seneca if he had stayed in Corsica. He 
came back into a most perilous environment. He 
may have been encouraged to do so by the knowl- 
edge that a man of the old faithful type, Afranius 
Burrus, was to have the very important post of 
prefect of the praetorian guard. Perhaps these 
two men were patriotic in their purpose and 
trusted that they were going to be able to keep 
matters from growing worse. 

Agrippina, while she left to the emperor the 
friends he liked and all the insignia of power, 
constantly abused his confidence. It is strange 
that he was so pliant to her scheming and mali- 
cious will. He seems to have been, ordinarily, dull 
and stupid, but when aroused he was impulsive 
and vindictive. At last his freedman and secre- 
tary. Narcissus, began to open his eyes to the 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 99 

extent to which he had been duped by his wife and 
to her disregard of all obligations to him. He 
seemed deeply moved by the discovery and re- 
marked that it had been his fate always to bear 
and then to punish the wickedness of his wives. 

These words, repeated to Agrippina, showed 
her clearly that if she was going to succeed in her 
purpose of getting the throne for her son, Nero, 
it would not do for her to risk any delay. She 
knew that she could do nothing injurious to her 
husband in the presence of his secretary, Narcis- 
sus. So she arranged with the physician of Narcis- 
sus that he should be sent away to some medicinal 
springs for his health. When he was gone she 
proceeded with her atrocious plan. By some means 
she secured the connivance of Halotes, the em- 
peror's prsegustator (the slave whose duty it was 
to protect him from poison by tasting every dish 
before it was presented to him) and of Xenephon 
of Cos, his physician. Then she consulted with 
Locusta, the infamous woman who is known to 
have been a professional poisoner, often resorted 
to in those turbulent days. The very existence of 
such a person is a frightful indication of the pre- 
vailing enormities. A compound was sought that 
might be best suited for the special purpose, not 
too rapid in its action to excite suspicion and not 
too slow, lest Claudius should have time to ar- 
range something for Britannicus. The poison was 
administered to him in a dish of mushrooms, of 
which he was extravagantly fond. It is said that 



100 UNDER (LESARS' SHADOW 

Agrippina herself handed him a choice morsel of 
the food when he was somewhat intoxicated, and 
it immediately caused him to be silent. After- 
ward, when there were indications that, on account 
of his gluttony, it might be ineffective, a physician 
was induced, under pretense of causing vomiting 
and so giving him relief from pain, to thrust a 
feather smeared with a deadly liquid down his 
throat. This completed the wicked work. Before 
morning this Caesar was a corpse. 

While all these exciting scenes were taking 
place in the reign of Claudius, the Apostle Paul 
had been prosecuting his wonderfully earnest 
ministry of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and was 
making missionary journeys in Asia Minor, Mace- 
donia, and Greece. It is in connection with his 
meeting Aquila and Priscilla at Corinth that we 
read in Acts xviii, 1, that "Claudius had com- 
manded all the Jews to depart from Eome. f ' The 
Roman historian, Suetonius, speaks of this decree 
and says it was issued because the Jews were 
"constantly making a disturbance, Chrestus being 
the instigator. ' ' No prominent Jew named Chres- 
tus being otherwise known in the records of that 
time, some have queried whether Chrestus may 
not be here a Latin corruption of the Greek word 
Christos, and whether these disturbances among 
the Jews may not have been disputes about the 
Christ, or Messiah, w^hom they expected, or even 
about Jesus as claiming to be that Messiah. The 



CLAUDIUS, THE STOLID 101 

suggestion is interesting, but We cannot prove it 
to be correct. 

Like his predecessors, Claudius is represented 
to us by ancient art in the shape of many statues 
and busts. The one chosen to illustrate these 
pages shows him to us in a flattering manner, as 
if he possessed the attributes of Jupiter. He is 
standing half-draped, with a wreath of oak leaves 
about his head, his left hand upraised to grasp 
the upper end of a long staff, and with an eagle 
at his right foot. The figure is not without some 
majesty, but there seems to be a look of anxiety 
and weariness upon his face. Surely, he had 
enough to make him anxious and weary in both 
his public and his private life. Unexpectedly 
called upon to be an emperor, he had wrought in- 
dustriously in the public service ; but he had not 
been equal to the moral strain of such a high 
position and had been the undiscerning dupe of 
iniquitous and malicious enemies. His worst foes 
had been those of his own household. 



CHAPTER V 

NERO, THE CRUEL 

Lucius Domitius Nero, the next Roman em- 
peror, was, as we have seen, the stepson of 
Claudius and the grandson of the famous Ger- 
manicus, who was a brother of Claudius. His 
mother was Agrippina II, the sister of Caligula, 
This Agrippina became the last wife of Claudius ; 
but Nero was her son by her former husband, Lu- 
cius Domitius. The Domitian gens, or family, had 
been a famous one for several generations and 
the particular branch of it to which Nero 's father 
belonged, namely, the Ahenobarbi, or brazen- 
beards, had long been prominent for its ability, 
its wealth, and its power. At the same time it 
had been noted for the faithlessness and ferocity 
shown by many of its representatives. Suetonius 
tells the story that the first Lucius Domitius, the 
founder of the line, was the man to whom Castor 
and Pollux announced the victory that had taken 
place at Lake Eegillus, when they rode into Rome, 
and that his beard was then changed from black 
to red in token of that supernatural manifestation. 
The Ahenobarbi always inherited, it is said, the 
complexion as well as the name. 

102 




Facing page 102 



NERO 



NERO, THE CEUEL 103 

When Nero was three years old his father died. 
His uncle, the emperor Caligula, managed to cheat 
him out of his inheritance, but afterward the em- 
peror Claudius restored it to him, added to it 
other property, and bestowed upon him many 
honors. His mother sought to have him properly 
educated and to have his manners cultivated ac- 
cording to the best standards of the time. He is 
said, as a boy, to have been affectionate, with 
some aptness to learn, and fond of praise. 

As the niece of Claudius, Agrippina had been 
allowed to occupy a place in the imperial palace 
next to the empress Messalina herself. When 
Messalina 's dissolute character became manifest 
to all, Agrippina, as we have related, took ad- 
vantage of it to increase her own favor with the 
emperor and the interests of her son as a possible 
successor to the throne. It was an audacious 
dream, because he would be thus put in the place 
of Britannicus, the emperor's son by Messalina. 
After Messalina's wretched death, and when 
Agrippina had reached the summit of her ambi- 
tion and had become the wife of Claudius (the 
Senate having passed a special edict to sanction 
this union of an uncle with his niece), this artful 
woman was able still more successfully to make 
her own son prominent and to keep Britannicus 
in the background. 

We have stated that the philosopher Seneca was 
called back from the exile, in which, — probably 
owing to the hatred of Messalina, — he had been 



104 UNDER CL2ESABS' SHADOW 

living on the island of Corsica; and was chosen 
to be the special instructor of the young Nero. 
Seneca was not only a keen theorist in states- 
manship and morals but he was shrewd also in 
matters of business, and had a taste for public 
affairs. He was probably as good an instructor 
as could have been found for such a service at 
that time. He was, however, very lenient with his 
royal pupil. He found in him a coarse nature with 
strong impulses. He adopted the plan of trying 
to allure him to his tasks by indulging him at other 
times in his lighter tastes. The young man be- 
came proficient in singing, in playing upon pipes, 
and in dancing, though these accomplishments had 
been disapproved by conservative Romans as in- 
appropriate to the military life of the conquerors 
of mankind. But Seneca seems to have gone 
further in yielding to Nero's natural inclinations. 
He connived at some of his vices. Surrounded by 
flatterers and schemers and depraved caterers to 
immorality, Nero early imbibed evil principles 
and adopted corrupt practices. He was inflated 
with conceit and bred to foolish ostentation. The 
wickedness of his own mother must have gone far 
to destroy in him all sentiments of virtue. What 
could be expected of an impulsive young man with 
such an heredity and such an environment? 

While he was put forward to be the public ad- 
vocate of measures that were popular, Agrippina 
reserved for Britannicus nothing but neglect. The 
attendants of the latter 's childhood, between 



KfERO, THE CRUEL 105 

whom and himself there had sprung up a mutual 
affection, were, one by one, removed from him 
through her influence, and he was left as much as 
possible in the shadow. 

When Claudius was dead Agrippina put the 
climax upon her crafty management by keeping 
the announcement from the public until every- 
thing was ready. She even gave out word that 
her husband was better and took care to retain 
Britannicus and his sisters under her close sur- 
veillance. To those in the palace who knew that 
Claudius was dead she pretended the greatest 
grief until noon of the next day. Then, when 
Burrus the Prefect walked across the courtyard 
to present the successor to the throne to the prae- 
torian guard, it was not Britannicus but Nero 
that walked by his side. Some, indeed, ventured 
to express the murmur : 

i ' Where is Britannicus ? ' ' 

But there was no one to champion his cause; 
and so the son of Agrippina was saluted as the 
emperor. It is also related that on the first even- 
ing of his imperial power, when a sentinel of the 
palace came to ask him for the watchword for the 
night, he, knowing well to whom he was indebted 
for his throne, returned the words, " Optima 
Mater,"— "The Best of Mothers." To what 
extent this feeling of gratitude was maintained by 
him in later years we shall see. 

Seneca, poet and philosopher, is said to have 
written a satire on the death of the emperor 



106 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

Claudius. The Senate, following foolish, prece- 
dents, had declared that he had become a god. 
This satire represented him as having become a 
gourd. The Senate had ascribed to him divinity. 
The satire spoke jocosely of his pumpkinity. 
Some eulogists of the philosopher are loth to be- 
lieve the identity, but many writers contend that 
this satire was substantially the same as the well- 
known ancient writing called the "Play Upon the 
Death of Nero ' ' that has come down to us, which 
bears many of the marks of Seneca's style and 
which describes in a burlesque manner the recep- 
tion and disgrace of Claudius among the gods. 
It is overflowing with contempt for the emperor, 
in strange contrast with the almost abject flattery 
that Seneca had written of him when he was 
anxious to win his favor and so get back from 
exile. Altogether, it is difficult to relieve Seneca 
from the charge of time-serving and hypocrisy. It 
is so much easier to write noble sentiments in re- 
gard to disinterestedness than it is to practice 
them in days of temptation ! From ridicule of the 
dead emperor the satire goes on to welcome the 
new one in flowery language. It says : 

"As when the bright sun gazes on the world and starts his 
chariot on his daily race; so Caesar breaks upon the earth. Such 
is the Nero whom Eome now beholds ! ; ' 

Nero was seventeen years of age when he was 
thus called to govern the civilized ^vorld. Wearied 
by the atrocities of his predecessors, the people 
could not but welcome the fair-faced youth in 



NEBO, THE CRUEL 107 

whose antecedents there was not much to excite 
serious apprehension. His busts represent him as 
having at this time a round face, a not displeasing 
countenance, and a slight beard. His hair is said 
to have been yellowish, or sandy. His figure was 
not well proportioned, — his neck being thick, his 
body large and his legs slender. His eyes were 
dark gray and their sight was somewhat impaired. 
He was careless in his dress, yet fond of finery. 
He particularly took care of his locks, arranging 
them in a manner somewhat effeminate. He some- 
times greatly offended fastidious taste by going 
with his feet bare, with his girdle loose, and wear- 
ing (even in public) a sort of dressing-gown. He 
entered upon his imperial career with a good 
degree of physical health and strength. 

From his very accession Nero felt uneasy on 
account of the jealousy of Britannicus. He knew 
that the sense of right would assert itself in the 
breasts of many in behalf of Britannicus and 
might become dangerous to his reign. He there- 
fore proceeded with caution. He pronounced a 
funeral oration over Claudius, which Seneca is 
believed to have composed for him. In it he made 
many conciliatory promises. There were not any 
of the nobles who had courage to call in question 
his claims. They cared not to risk their heads 
simply for the sake of a mere righteous succes- 
sion. They preferred to tolerate him as long as 
he treated them with respect. They held the weak- 



108 UNDER OESAES' SHADOW 

ness of his title to the throne as a weapon to be 
used against him if he should offend them. 

Meanwhile Seneca and Burrus, the young em- 
peror's principal advisers, did all they could to 
make his government a good one and so establish 
its authority. Their chief difficulties were to con- 
trol his headstrong nature and to prevent his 
mother from exercising too much influence over 
him. She, who had supplanted Messalina and 
had murdered Claudius, was not going to let her 
power go, if she could help it. She leagued her- 
self with Pallas, the wealthy and unprincipled 
freedman at court, and it soon became evident 
that she was making trouble. 

Her son, too, at first was too ready to give her 
honors. She was borne in public in the same 
litter with him. She caused coins to be stamped 
having her head with his upon them. She sent 
dispatches to foreign courts and gave answers to 
ambassadors. She even ordered the murder of 
Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, who was obnoxious 
to her. Burrus and Seneca were alarmed at her 
bold assumptions of authority. They determined 
to break down her power at any cost. To draw 
away Nero from confiding too much in her they 
even favored his intrigue with a freedwoman 
named Acte, which greatly enraged Agrippina. 
And this rage was increased when Nero removed 
Pallas from his position of influence and dis- 
missed him from court. 

Agrippina then declared herself the patroness 



NEBO, THE CEUEL 109 

of Britannicus, notwithstanding she had set him 
aside to bring Nero to the throne, and she ap- 
pealed to the army to make that young man now 
the emperor in the place of her son. Nero saw 
there was danger of a revolution. He therefore 
adopted the iniquitous course then so common 
with jealous rulers. He had Britannicus poisoned. 
The poison, it is said, was prepared under the 
emperor's own eyes and was administered in the 
wine-cup of Britannicus as he sat at a banquet 
in the palace. The youth fell back lifeless, but 
Nero passed the occurrence by as one of the fits, 
to which, he said, his brother was subject. That 
same night the corpse of Britannicus was 
solemnly cremated with funeral ceremony on the 
Campus Martius. 

Nero then tried to divert attention from the 
event and to cover up his crime by showering 
presents, houses, and estates on the favorites of 
the palace. The much praised philosopher, 
Seneca, extolled the clemency of Nero during this, 
the first year of his reign ; yet this cool and calcu- 
lated murder of Britannicus seems to have oc- 
curred within the limits of that year. Seneca 
probably tried to excuse himself by saying that, if 
Nero should not be sustained, Agrippina would 
flourish in her power ; and that would be worse for 
the public weal. Meanwhile, he directed the ad- 
ministration of the national affairs in a manner to 
please the Senate and made the first five years of 
Nero a prosperous time for the great body of the 



110 UNDER CJESARS' SHADOW 

people. They were afterward spoken of as a 
period of great happiness. This must have been 
largely in contrast with the great gloom that fol- 
lowed; yet doubtless Nero was to a great extent 
then pliant to the advice of his tutor and the 
prefect. 

Nero prudently declined having magnificent 
statues erected in his honor. He reserved severe 
measures for notorious criminals, and seems even 
to have been touched at times with emotion of 
compassion. Seneca, to increase the youthful- 
emperor's popularity, circulated an anecdote of 
him to the effect that when asked to affix his signa- 
ture to an order for the execution of a condemned 
person he exclaimed : 

' l How I wish that I did not know how to write. ' ' 

But these moments of tenderness seem to have 
been only of short duration. The spirit which 
had been manifested in the poisoning of Britan- 
nicus soon reappeared in other acts of meanness 
and cruelty. He had been trained from his child- 
hood in too hard and selfish a school. 

The emperor's mother, Agrippina, was con- 
tinuing to plot against him, and her various de- 
signs to disenthrone him were, of course, reported 
to him. This disturbed him in the midst of the 
recklessness with which he was carrying on his 
debaucheries with his boon companions. "The 
Best of Mothers," as he had called her on his 
accession, had now become the worst of his relent- 
less enemies. She seems to have allowed all her 



NEKO, THE CEUEL 111 

maternal affection for him to be chilled by the 
disappointment of her love of personal power. 

For our knowledge of those times we are in- 
debted largely to the "Annals" of Tacitus. Some 
questions arise as to the reliability of his accounts. 
Josephus, who, as a foreigner, may have been 
more impartial, says that different historians of 
Nero's reign were swayed by opposite prejudices ; 
yet he believed in the poisoning of Britannicus 
and in other cruel murders by Nero now to be 
related. 

Poppaea Sabina, one of the fairest but wickedest 
women in Kome, aspired to supplant Octavia, the 
emperor's wife, and concentrated her fascinations 
upon him. Nero sent her husband to a distant 
province and she suffered him to depart without 
a sigh. Nero's mother, Agrippina, was of course 
much in the way of Poppaea 's designs, so Poppaea 
laid her plan most diligently to get rid of the older 
woman. She taunted the emperor with beiing 
afraid of his mother and put before him all the 
movements of Agrippina in the darkest light, 
until Nero was persuaded. His regard for his 
mother was already changed to hatred. 

With the aid of Anicetus, the commander of the 
fleet at Misenum, — who had a spite against Agrip- 
pina, — a plan was formed by which she was in- 
duced to embark on a barge, which, at a given 
signal, was to break in pieces. The plan was not 
successful. The mechanism failed to work. Yet 
the sailors managed to tip the ship so that Agrip- 



112 UNDER CAESARS' SHADOW 

pina and her companions were thrown into the 
water. She succeeded by the aid of some fisher- 
men in reaching the shore in safety. Seeing that 
her only chance lay in dissimulation, she sent one 
of her freedmen to tell her son that by the mercy 
of heaven she had escaped from a terrible acci- 
dent, but that he need not be alarmed and must 
not come to her, as she greatly needed rest and 
quiet. 

When Nero received the account he was thrown 
into the greatest anxiety, knowing that now his 
mother had discovered his plot against her and 
would certainly seek revenge. In great agitation 
of mind he sent for Burrus and Seneca to come to 
him instantly. Laying before them the situation, 
he looked from one to the other in suspense for 
their advice. There was a long and painful 
silence. At last Seneca asked Burrus if the 
soldiers could be trusted to put her to death. 
When the reply was given that the praetorians 
would do nothing to injure a daughter of Ger- 
manicus and that Anicetus should complete the 
work he had begun, Anicetus showed himself 
willing to do so. He trumped up another charge 
against Agrippina and hurried off to her villa at 
Bauli. There he and his minions found her in a 
dimly lighted chamber, attended by a single hand- 
maid, who immediately rose to steal away. 

"Dost thou, too, desert mel" said the wretched 
Agrippina. 

The armed men surrounded her couch. Anicetus 




Facing page 112 



AGRIPPINA II AND NERO 



NERO, THE CRUEL 113 

was the first to strike. The rest immediately fol- 
lowed his example, and she was dispatched with 
many blows. Almost with her last breath she 
cried out against the perfidy of her ungrateful 
son. 

If we are to believe many writers, Nero never 
ceased after this murder of his mother to be 
troubled with a guilty conscience. Yet he wrote 
at the time a letter to the Senate from Naples de- 
claring that his mother had conspired against his 
life and that in the confusion caused by her detec- 
tion she had miserably perished by her own hand. 
The disaster of the ship he declared to have been 
purely accidental. It is painful to record the 
altogether probable fact that the real author of 
this shameful document was Seneca, who thus put 
the emperor's message into words for him. It 
affirmed that the death of the imperious woman 
should be regarded as a public benefit. But such 
declarations from such a source gave little satis- 
faction. So widely was Nero believed to be guilty 
of Agrippina's murder that at Rome the sack, 
the instrument of death for parricides, was se- 
cretly hung about his statues and the names of the 
triad of conspicuous matricides, Nero, Orestes, 
and Alcmaeon, were found posted by night upon 
the walls. Yet the nobles were servile enough to 
welcome him back with honor, and the populace 
was diverted and gratified by the new and extrav- 
agant shows that he provided for all. The 
multitude even cheered him as he threw aside all 



114 UNDER OESARS' SHADOW 

his dignity as an emperor and went himself upon 
the stage as an actor or drove recklessly in the 
Circus Maximus as a charioteer. He delighted in 
everything sensational and spectacular; in noise 
and show and speed — what pleasure he would 
have taken in locomotives and automobiles had 
they existed in his day. It could not be said that 
the laws were not respected or that the citizens, 
as a body, were not at peace. But there were wild 
extravagances and follies to startle and distress 
the people. And that was not all. There were so 
much dissipation and licentiousness in high places 
that all the best people in the empire were scan- 
dalized and it was evident that the moral strength 
of the nation was undermined. 

Nero was sowing to the wind and he was sure 
to reap the whirlwind. Satirical voices began to 
make themselves heard. Then Burrus, the strong 
soldier and wise counselor, died ; and Nero divided 
his command between Fenius Rufus, a timid and 
subservient man, and Tigellinus, one of his own 
infamous associates. 

The influence of Seneca, which in many respects 
had tended to wisdom and moderation, was thus 
undermined and broken. He had gained nothing by 
his temporizing with evil, his policy of compromise 
and mildness. Perhaps Nero himself had become 
disgusted with him for saying one thing in his 
philosophic maxims and pursuing the opposite 
course in his practice. He no longer treated Seneca 
with veneration. Chagrined and broken-hearted 




Facing page 115 



POPP^EA 



NERO, THE CETJEL 115 

the latter withdrew to a less conspicuous life. 
Rubellius Plautus and Sulla, two prominent men, 
of whom Nero was jealous, were put to death by 
the emperor's order, and at the instigation of 
Tigellinus. The assassinations were accomplished 
by messengers sent from the imperial court to the 
provinces where they lived. Nero pretended to 
be delivered thus from two dangerous adversaries 
and required the Senate to congratulate him. He 
even declared to friends that he was now free to 
celebrate his marriage with Poppasa, without fear 
of any rival who might profit by the public com- 
miseration for his wife Octavia. This woman, 
who was the daughter of Claudius and whose life 
at court had been one of constant distress, was 
ruthlessly condemned and seized, upon some arro- 
gant pretext, and her veins were opened with a 
knife. Her head was severed from her body and 
carried to her enemy, the cruel Poppaea. After 
this all restraints of decency and self-respect were 
thrown off and wild orgies went on in the imperial 
palaces. 

In the tenth year of Nero's reign Rome was 
swept by a terrible fire. It began at the eastern 
end of the Circus Maximus, between the Palatine 
and Caelian hills. It swept along the bases of the 
Palatine and Aventine hills, through the Vela- 
brum on the one hand and the Forum on the other. 
It raged six days, destroying both private dwell- 
ings and public buildings. Many of the old cher- 
ished landmarks of Rome ? like the Regia (or 



116 UNDER (L3ESARS ' SHADOW 

palace) of Numa, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, 
and the Temple of Vesta, were ruined. When it 
was thought to have subsided a renewal of it, or 
another fire, broke out on the outskirts of the city 
beneath the Pincian hill and raged toward the 
Viminal and the Quirinal. Of the fourteen dis- 
tricts, or regions of the city, three were entirely 
obliterated, while seven others were more or less 
severely injured. Not only noted buildings but 
elegant patrician homes and many rare works of 
art, — works that could not be duplicated, — were 
altogether lost. 

The poorer people, of course, were brought into 
a condition of great hardship and suffering. The 
conflagration occurred when the tyrannies and 
cruelties of Nero had largely increased the num- 
ber of his personal enemies, when mutterings of 
contempt and hatred against him had become fre- 
quent, and when his iniquitous excesses had led 
many to believe that he could be guilty of any- 
thing. The fact that some incendiaries were seen 
at work, who said they were acting under orders, 
and the rumor that while the city was burning 
Nero had watched the flames from the tower of 
his villa, and had there chanted the "Sack of 
Troy" with the accompaniment of his own lyre, 
favored the suspicion that he had himself caused 
the awful calamity. Some claimed that he did it 
in order that he might rebuild the capital more 
magnificently and call the new Rome by his own 
name, But these suspicions cannot be proved. 



NEEO, THE CEUEL 117 

It is enough to affirm that under the additional 
miseries caused by the fire the people had become 
bold to express their exasperation with the exist- 
ing reign. Not even the imposing religious cere- 
monies, conducted to appease the gods, could quiet 
the popular outcries. Nero seems to have felt 
that it was necessary to divert suspicions from 
himself by presenting other victims. 

Tacitus tells us that to save himself, this em- 
peror sacrificed " those whom, hated on account 
of their vices, the vulgar called Christians.' ' This 
name, he says, was derived from one Christus, 
who was executed in the reign of Tiberius by the 
procurator Of Judea, Pontius Pilate. And he 
adds that "the accursed superstition, for a mo- 
ment repressed, spread again, not over Judea 
only, the source of this evil, but in Eome also, 
where all things vile and shameful find room and 
reception.'' This Neronian persecution, so hor- 
rible in its bitterness and bloodshed, we shall have 
occasion to consider later in connection with the 
sufferings of the early Christian martyrs. 

We may remark here that some, such as the his- 
torian Gibbon, have found a difficulty in accepting 
the plain assertions of Tacitus and Suetonius on 
this subject on the ground that there was nothing 
in the known habits and teachings of the Chris- 
tians at this early period to call down upon them 
such bitter hatred. They were peaceable citizens 
and had hardly yet become distinct from the Jews 
in the observation of the Romans. It has been 



118 UNDER OESARS > SHADOW 

suggested that Tacitus and others, writing some 
time after the event, were describing what was 
really a persecution of the Jews in Rome and 
that, because they had incurred the displeasure of 
Nero by their turbulent disputes over an expected 
Christ or over certain false Christs and because, 
in Tacitus' time, the Christians proclaimed the 
Christ as having come, the historian had not kept 
these facts distinct and was attributing to the 
Christians an unpopularity which, so early, be- 
longed to them only as part of the Jews. Meri- 
vale suggests that there may be an element of 
truth in this theory. That is to say, the Jews, 
when persecuted for their Messianic enthusiasm, 
may have succeeded in transferring the odium to 
the Christians as being in this respect far more 
intense than themselves. 

That Nero did subject the believers of Jesus to 
great cruelty and that Paul, if not Peter, suffered 
martyrdom during his reign have been accepted 
beliefs from such early times and are so consistent 
with the otherwise well-known caprice and 
severity of Nero that there seems no reason to 
doubt the facts. The Neronian persecution may 
have been short and limited to Italy, but it was 
sharp and bloody. The reckless tyranny of Nero 
was supported by the voluptuousness and heart- 
lessness of his age. The statements of the Apostle 
Paul in the first chapter of his Epistle to the 
Romans are not too strong concerning the gross 
immorality of society. Stoicism promulgated, in- 



NERO, THE CRUEL 119 

deed, some noble ideals and may even have been 
stimulated to do its best by the challenges of 
Christianity, but the body politic was corrupt 
throughout. 

After the great fire Nero addressed himself 
with zeal to the rebuilding of Rome. He had a 
pride in making his capital splendid and espe- 
cially in erecting for himself his famous palace 
called "the Golden House." This seems to have 
been a connection and combination, by means of 
arches and porticos, of the palaces on the Pala- 
tine with others on the Esquiline. In these build- 
ings, which required several acres, he followed 
the Greek models of architecture and ornament. 
A conspicuous feature among them was his own 
colossal statue set up near what is now called, 
from it, the Colosseum. To defray the expense of 
these and other buildings he exacted or confis- 
cated the wealth of other men and even stole with 
impious cupidity some of the rich gifts which had 
been placed in the temples. The growing discon- 
tent and opposition to him, therefore, became 
more manifest among the nobility. Conspiracies 
were formed against him. Some of these he was 
able to put down; but others sprang up in their 
places. Sometimes, alarmed by them, he drowned 
his fears in a flood of popular flattery gained by 
his undignified performances in the circus and the 
theater both at home and abroad. When his wife 
Poppsea died, some asserted that it was a conse- 
quence of his own brutal treatment. One great 



120 UNDER CRABS' SHADOW 

man after another, some of them honored by his- 
torians as almost personifications of virtue, lost 
their lives by poison or by the sword, by assassi- 
nation or by compelled suicide, as victims to his 
jealousy or his covetousness. 

Even Seneca, the philosophic instructor of 
Nero's youth, had fallen under his imperial 
pupiPs displeasure. Nero had no use for Seneca's 
moral precepts and felt that he was no longer 
helpful to him in the affairs of State. They were 
also sharers in too many guilty secrets for Nero 
to care for his presence. An attempt was made to 
involve him in a charge of treason brought, with 
truth, against Calpurnius and others. This 
charge was not proved against Seneca, but it was 
made the most of at court. Not long after this 
the Prefect Burrus died, and his successor, Tigel- 
linus, was no friend of Seneca. He inflamed the 
emperor's covetousness for Seneca's enormous 
wealth, which then, he said, was throwing into the 
shade the splendor of the imperial household. He 
also represented Seneca as a rival to him in poetry 
and eloquence. All these arguments prevailed 
with a heart already full of hatred. 

So an order w^as sent to Seneca that he must 
die. It was received without alarm. As time was 
refused him wherein to remake his will, he said 
to the friends around him that he would bequeath 
to them the example of his life. He checked their 
tears and asked them where were their precepts of 
philosophy and the fortitude that their studies 




Facing page 121 



SENECA 



NERO, THE CRUEL 121 

should have taught them? Did they not know the 
cruelty of Nero? Was it not to be expected that 
he would make an end of his master and tutor 
after murdering his mother and his brother? He 
begged his wife Paulina not to enter upon an end- 
less sorrow. The veins of his limbs were then 
opened that he might bleed to death, a process 
that had to be accelerated by a vapor bath. Dur- 
ing his lingering distress he conversed with those 
attending him. When Seneca passed away, Nero, 
though feeling a grim satisfaction, had really lost 
the best counselor he ever had. 

In many of his writings, this great philosopher 
rose to a lofty height of ethical insight and dis- 
crimination. He seems to have been truly anxious 
to raise the moral tone of society. No man up to 
his time had apprehended more clearly than did 
he that moral light with which God is ready to 
light every man that cometh into the world. No 
man wrote better of sincerity, courage, content- 
ment, justice, kindness to others even to the weak- 
est slave, mercy to the wicked, the beauty of un- 
selfishness, and the mind's possible superiority 
to its environment. He was a great expounder of 
natural religion as studied by his observation and 
by his conscience. Here, for example are a few 
of his maxims : 



If we wish to be just judges of all things, let us first persuade 
ourselves of this: that there is not one of us without fault. 
We shall be wise if we desire but little. 
If each man takes account of himself and measures his own 



122 UNDEB (LESABS' SHADOW 

body lie will know how little it can contain and for how short 
a time. 

Man is born for mutual assistance. You must live for another 
if you wish to live for yourself. 

We are members of one great body. — Let him who hath con- 
ferred a fa,vor hold his tongue about it. 

Man's best gifts lie beyond the power of man either to give 
or to take away. The Universe, the grandest and loveliest work 
of nature, and the intellect, which was created to observe and 
admire, are our special and eternal possessions. 



Such examples might be culled in great numbers 
from his writings. He seems at times to have 
been an earnest seeker after God. He declared 
that God did not dwell in temples made of wood 
and stone ; that He did not delight in the blood of 
victims ; that He is near to all His creatures ; that 
men must believe in Him before they can approach 
Him, and that the truest service for Him is to be 
like unto Him. Some of his sayings approach the 
lofty precepts of Christ and His apostles. He is 
frequently quoted with approbation by early 
Christian writers. Yet his precepts differ from 
the Scriptural teachings in the fact that some of 
them are merely rhetorical and superficial. 
Others are fragmentary and inadequate. They 
are not winnowed from all chaff. At their highest 
level also they simply emphasize the demands of 
the moral law without offering to man any help 
for attaining to holiness other than what his own 
heroic decision may furnish. In their searching 
quality some of them are of a type so Pauline 
that many have thought that he and Paul, his con- 
temporary, must have been well acquainted. 



NEEO, THE CBUEL 123 

There is said to have been a tradition to that 
effect as early as the fourth century. Indeed, 
some early Christian thought he was doing a good 
service to write a book that he called ' * Conversa- 
tions between Seneca and Paul." Its spurious- 
ness is now generally admitted. But we naturally 
ask: Is it likely that Seneca knew anything of 
Paul? 

On one hand, we may answer on general prin- 
ciples that a man in the high position of Seneca 
would not be likely to come into contact with de- 
spised and persecuted people, such as the Jews 
(and especially the Christians) then were. Most 
stoics would rather repel such company super- 
ciliously. On the other hand, we know that Paul 
had been tried in Corinth by Marcus Annaeus 
Gallio, Seneca's brother, and that at Paul's ar- 
rival at Borne he was put under the charge of 
Burrus, the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, who 
was Seneca's friend. It is possible that through 
one of these, especially the latter, the philosopher 
may have heard of the apostle and in the course 
of his philosophic inquiries may have gone to hear 
him in disguise or listened to reports of his 
preaching, which was causing a stir among the 
Jews. He may thus have used ideas the source of 
which he would not deign to acknowledge. 
Whether this was true or not, it is probable that 
Paul and Peter were before long much respected 
by some members of the Annaean family to which 
Seneca belonged. Lanciani tells us that in 1867 



124 UNDER CLESARS ' SHADOW 

an inscription was found in a tomb at Ostia such 
as is here reproduced. 

While it is clearly a pagan inscription, shown 
by the invocation letters D . M (Diis Manibus, — 
to the gods of the lower regions, — ) Marcus 
Annaeus, the father, who placed the inscription, 
seems to have been named for Paul, and the 
Marcus Annaeus, the "dearest son," whom it 
commemorates, to have been named for both Paul 
and Peter. The occurrence of the two names to- 



D . M 

M. ANN^EO 

PAULO . PETRO 

M. ANNAEUS . PAULUS 

FILIO . CARISSIMO 



gether make it altogether probable that both these 
apostles had been held in great honor by this 
particular household, and that a suggestion of a 
friendship with Christians is not wholly 
arbitrary. 

Seneca was one of the greatest of the Stoics. 
"The Stoical philosophy," says Frederick Farrar, 
"may be compared to a torch, which flings a faint 
gleam here and there in the dusky recesses of a 
mighty cavern, while Christianity may be com- 
pared to the sun, pouring into the inmost depths 



NERO, THE CRUEL 125 

of the same cavern its sevenfold illumination. 
The torch had a value and a brightness of its own ; 
but, compared to the dawning of that new glory, 
it appears to be dim and ineffectual, even though 
its brightness was a real brightness and had been 
drawn from the same ethereal source." Con- 
cerning the close of life, Seneca wrote to 
Lucilius : 



I am preparing myself for that day on which, laying aside 
all artifice or subterfuge, I shall be able to judge respecting 
myself whether I really speak or merely feel as a brave man 
should: whether all these words of haughty obstinacy which I 
have hurled against fortune were mere pretense and pantomime. 
What you have really achieved will then be manifest when your 
end is near. 



Alas! the trouble with Seneca was that which 
puts all the great moral philosophers so far below 
Christ and even his apostles, namely, that he 
so failed to live up to the precepts that he wrote. 
It was when he descended from the plane of theory 
and sentiment to that of practice in daily life that 
he often ignobly failed. 

No complete biography of him has come down 
to us. The curtain rises and falls over separated 
scenes in his life. But we know enough to mark 
his strange inconsistencies. His temporizing 
management of his imperial pupil, his accumula- 
tion of great wealth while he was extolling pov- 
erty, his mingling among the extravagancies and 
corruptions of the imperial court, his apparent 
failure to express any condemnation of the mur- 



126 UNDEE (LESARS' SHADOW 

ders of Britannicus and Agrippina, and his apol- 
ogy for the latter of these horrors, which he wrote 
for Nero, are enough to be mentioned. It must be 
admitted that he had a very hard place to fill as an 
adviser of the emperor, and was often, doubtless, 
sorely perplexed to know what course of action 
would be best for the public welfare, but he can- 
not be acquitted of consent to some of Nero's 
crimes. 

It was from the Roman army at last that retri- 
bution came to the cruel tyrant. He had become 
uneasy at the murmurs and the gloom that had 
manifestly increased among the people at his cap- 
ital. He went for relief to his rural resorts in 
Campania. Reports of discontent there came to 
him from the provinces. The army camps con- 
tained many who were brooding over wrongs he 
had done them and were waiting for their revenge. 

Among the prominent military men of the day 
was Servius Sulpicius Galba, who had for some 
years ruled under the imperial government over a 
portion of Spain. Descended from an honored 
family, this man had also achieved for himself 
renown and was popular with the soldiers. He 
was, therefore, an object of jealousy to Nero, 
though he was seventy-three years of age. While 
Nero was absent from Italy, making exhibitions 
of himself in public theaters and circuses, in 
Greece, Galba received some overtures from 
Caius Julius Vindex, a Roman general in Gaul, 
who hated Nero for some of his exactions. Vindex 



NERO, THE CRUEL 127 

felt that there was no chance for himself to be the 
successor of Nero, but he fixed his eyes on Galba 
as a possible chief. Galba hesitated to lead a 
revolution. Meanwhile the plottings of Vindex 
were discovered and that officer committed suicide. 

Galba then felt that he must be more than ever 
an object of hatred to Nero's cruelty, and that he 
might as well proceed in an attempt to restore 
prosperity to the empire. He harangued the 
soldiers. They saluted him as emperor, but he 
would not as yet receive any title but that of 
Legate of the Senate and Roman people. He, how- 
ever, enlisted more young men and prepared for 
a campaign. When the Roman general, Virginius 
Rufus of lower Germany, entered into communica- 
tion with him, the news spread far and wide that 
Nero's fall was sure. Otho, Nero's former com- 
panion, from his distant station on the shore of 
the Atlantic, sent messages of cheer to Galba. 
Roman legions in other parts of the world also 
respectively hailed their own chiefs as emperor. 
The empire seemed tp be breaking up into pieces. 

When Nero's attention was first called to the 
handwriting on the wall, as it were, he treated it 
with contempt and expressed satisfaction at the 
prospect of confiscating to his own uses the estates 
of these traitors. He lingered for a while, ridicu- 
lously seeking applause for himself by his partici- 
pation in public entertainments at Naples. After 
he returned to Rome he dedicated a temple to 
Poppaea. But he spent much time in trifles, play- 



128 UNDER (LESARS' SHADOW 

ing and singing and driving the chariot in the 
circus. When courier after courier dashed into 
Rome bringing tidings of the rebellion of this or 
that province, he summoned troops from Illyricum 
and brought sailors from the fleet at Ostia to de- 
fend the city. He threatened to recall the foreign 
magistrates and disgrace them. He called upon 
the populace, whom he had pampered, to rise in 
his behalf or he would let loose his lions upon 
them. He declared he would massacre those 
Senators who would not stand by him. Finally, 
he said he would meet the approaching revolu- 
tionists unarmed, trusting to his beauty, his tears, 
and his persuasive voice. Meanwhile the truly 
patriotic were happy in the increasing expectation 
of some deliverance from his yoke. 

He had reached Rome in February. By June 
his cause was hopeless. Galba, it is true, with his 
forces, had not arrived. But the Praetorian Guard 
had been turned against him by their prefect, 
Nymphidius, to whom the camp had been given up 
by Tigillinus. When told that his last hope of as- 
sistance had deceived him, Nero started up from 
his couch at supper in his Golden House, dashed 
his choicest cups, which he had been using, to the 
ground, borrowed a vial of poison and went out 
to walk restlessly in the neighboring gardens. 
Afterward he conjured some of the military 
officers to join him in flight. They all either found 
excuses or openly refused. Then one, bolder than 
the rest, said to him : 



NEEO, THE CBUEL 129 

"Is it then so hard to die?" 

He would have gone and thrown himself into the 
Tiber. One of his freedmen, named Phaon, 
offered his villa as a refuge. It was about four 
miles from Eome. It is easily identified still, 
situated between the Via Salaria and the Via 
Nomentana, For this he started, wearing a rough 
dress and barefoot and with a mantle of coarse 
material about his shoulders and face. In this 
disguise he was mounted on a horse and was ac- 
companied by four friends, Phaon, Epaphroditus 
(who was another wealthy freedman, the secre- 
tary or librarian of Nero), Sporus, and one more 
whose name is not given. He passed through the 
city gate at early dawn, not far from the Prae- 
torian camp. Some accounts declare that he 
could hear soldiers cursing his name and declar- 
ing that Gralba would be his successor. It is said 
that thunder and lightning and the shock of earth- 
quake added to the excitement of the hour, while 
the sky was draped with heavy black clouds. 
They met some people hurrying into the city. One 
asked what news there might be from the palace. 

Before crossing the Nomentana bridge, over the 
Anio, a bridge that is still standing, Nero's horse 
shied, frightened at a dead man lying by the road- 
side. This caused the emperor's disguise to slip 
aside for a moment, so that a messenger from the 
Praetorian camp, passing just then, recognized his 
face. Near the fourth milestone they turned 
aside and followed a path through a canebrake 



130 UNDER CLESARS' SHADOW 

along the edge of a ditch, now called the Fosso 
della Cecchina. This brought them to the rear of 
Phaon's villa, for they had not approached the 
main entrance that they might escape observation. 
A hole had to be made in the back wall of the 
house. When it was completed, they crept through 
it into a bath-room, where Nero threw himself 
upon a pallet. His comrades urged him at once 
to escape by suicide from the indignities which 
would be heaped upon him by his foes as soon as 
he was captured. Presently word was brought to 
him that the Senate had decreed his death as an 
enemy to Rome. Terrified at this Nero took two 
daggers from his bosom, and with many grimaces 
tried their edges, one after another, and then laid 
them down, saying that the moment for him to 
use them had not yet come. Then he implored 
some one to set him the example of suicide. He 
reproached himself for his timidity. 

"Fie, fie, Nero!" he cried, "Courage, man; 
come ! ' ' 

Hearing then the sound of horsemen sent to 
seize him alive, he placed a weapon to his throat 
and his freedman Epaphroditus drove it home. 
This was on the ninth of June, in the 14th year 
of his reign and when he was at the age of thirty 
years and six months. 

He was the last of the Julian family. Though 
few were disposed to weep at his departure and 
though multitudes throughout the empire felt 
relief when they heard of it, his body was not 



NEBO, THET CEUEL 131 

refused a decent burial. By the consent of Icelus, 
representing Gralba, the newly elected emperor, 
Ecloge and Alexandra, who had been the nurses 
of his childhood, with Acte, who had been a com- 
panion in his vices, and the three men who had 
accompanied him in his flight furnished the money 
for the cremation of his body, with suitable 
ceremonies. 

The three women brought the ashes and placed 
them in the tomb of the Domitian family. This 
stood on a spur of the Pincian Hill, not far behind 
the present church of Santa Maria del Popolo, 
just inside the city gate and in the square of the 
same name. Lanciani speaks of the discovery (in 
a very recent year, on the exact spot of Nero's 
suicide) of the tomb of Claudia Ecloge, the old 
nurse who had been so devoted to the emperor 
when a child. The fields around the spot for 
hundreds of feet in every direction are said to 
have been strewn with the usual ruins of a villa 
of the first century and the finding of this simple 
slab is a most pathetic incident, in view of the 
details that we have described. Lord Byron says 
in "Don Juan": 



When Nero perished by the justest doom 

Which ever the destroyer yet destroyed, 
Amidst the roar of liberated Kome, 

Of nations freed and the world overjoyed, 
Some hands unseen strewed flowers upon his tomb,- 

Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void 
Of feeling for some kindness done, when power 

Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour. 



132 UNDER CJESARS' SHADOW 

The stone slab on which is inscribed the simple 
epitaph of Ecloge is in the Capitoline Museum. 
Perhaps it was by her own request, in tender 
recollections of earlier days and also of her part 
in the preparations of his body for its cremation, 
that she was buried on the scene of her infamous 
nurseling's death. 

There is an old tradition that the Church of 
Santa Maria del Popolo was founded by Pope 
Pascal II in the early part of the eleventh century 
on the site of the tombs of the Domitii and the 
burial place of Nero, because he would thus free 
the place from the demons that were supposed to 
haunt it. In the sixteenth century it was the Au- 
gustinian Convent (now suppressed) adjoining 
this church that was the lodging place of the monk 
Martin Luther on his visit to Rome. On his ar- 
rival he prostrated himself on the earth and ex- 
claimed in the language of an old pilgrim hymn : 

"I salute thee, holy Rome, sacred with the 
blood of the martyrs." 

Then he celebrated mass in the church. Before 
he departed from Rome, — having very different 
feelings from those with which he had entered it, 
and soon to become a great reformer, — he cele- 
brated mass in this church again. It contains 
many grand old tombs and fine works of art. In 
the center of the square, betweQn four spouting 
lions, rises the Egyptian obelisk, which the Em- 
peror Augustus erected in B. C. 10, in the ancient 
Circus Maximus to commemorate the subjugation 



NEEO, THE CRUEL 133 

of Egypt. Its hieroglyphic inscription is said to 
mention the names of Meneptah and Barneses III 
(1326 and 1273 B. C.). 

Hawthorne in his "Marble Faun," that book 
which has become a very classic for its reproduc- 
tion of modern Boman life and spirit, says : 

All Eoman works and ruins, whether of the empire, the far-off 
Republic or the still more distant Kings, assume a transient, vis- 
ionary and impalpable character when we think that this in- 
destructible monument supplied one of the recollections which 
Moses and the Israelites bore from Egypt into the desert. Per- 
chance on beholding the cloudy pillar and the fiery column 
they whispered awe-stricken to one another: "In its shape it is 
like that old obelisk which we and our fathers have so often seen 
on the borders of the Nile. " 

And now that very obelisk, with hardly a trace 
of decay upon it, is the first thing that the modern 
traveler sees after entering the Flaminian gate. 
Egyptian monarchs, Eoman emperors, the leader 
of the Protestant Reformation: — what widely 
different historic names are conjured np for us by 
these adjacent memorials. Near the church the 
carriage driveway now leads up from terrace to 
terrace to the public garden on the Pincian Hill. 
Here the modern landscape artists have laid out 
a charming resort, reminding us of the ancient 
and luxurious gardens of Lucullus which stood 
near the same spot. Until 1840 this beautiful 
park had been for centuries a desolate waste; 
and here in the middle ages the ghost of Nero was 
believed to be forever wandering. On pleasant 
afternoons, and especially on Sunday afternoon, 



134 UNDER (LESARS' SHADOW 

many fine equipages may now be seen moving 
along its avenues, for it is the fashionable prome- 
nade of the Roman aristocracy, and from it a fine 
view over the city, taking in the dome of Saint 
Peter's, may be enjoyed. The military band dis- 
courses excellent music. The occupants of the 
carriages greet each other with bows and smiles. 
Pedestrians loiter and converse. In this strange 
old city, including so many strata of memories and 
so cosmopolitan in its society, modern gayeties and 
venerable antiquities jostle one another. In the 
midst of the living and festive throng one's mind 
can rove back through history and think of this 
and that famous event, significant or tragic and 
widely separated in time, which have occurred 
upon the ground over which he is passing. 



POSTSCEIPT 

Isr these brief reviews, which we have now made 
of the careers of the five great Caesars of the 
New Testament period, we have caught many im- 
pressions of the dark character of that world into 
which Christ came and in which His kingdom had 
to make its first spiritual conquests. It was an 
age of vast wealth and power, but these were con- 
centrated in the hands of a few. Enormous sums 
were spent on ostentatious displays, on epicurean 
feasts, and on sumptuous couches. The great 
masses of men were poor and ignorant indeed. 
Selfish luxury and extravagance mocked at abject 
beggary and despair. Multitudes were always on 
the verge of starvation. Little children were fre- 
quently exposed to die. It was an age of cynical 
unbelief as to the great verities of God and the 
soul, and at the same time one of trifling and 
absurd superstition. Philosophical groping after 
truth was accompanied by deep sadness. Dissi- 
pation found its penalty in cloyed disgust. Suicide 
was not only frequent but approved by some of 
the great teachers. Cold cruelty was the minister 
to unbridled ambition. It was a time of sanguin- 
ary combats in the arena and of widespread 
slavery. The old Eoman virtues of the stern and 

135 



136 POSTSCBIPT 

faithful type had largely expired. Never was 
there an age in which all forms of vice displayed 
more openly their methods and their achieve- 
ments. As men became more polished in artistic 
culture they seemed to become more vile in per- 
sonal conduct. The poet Horace said: 

The age of our fathers, worse than that of our grandsires, has 
produced us, who are yet baser and who are doomed to give birth 
to a still more degraded offspring. 

Seneca wrote : 

All things are full of iniquity and vice; more crime is com- 
mitted than can be remedied by restraint. We struggle in a huge 
contest of criminality. Daily the passion for sin is greater. The 
shame in committing it is less. 

From these quotations, and many others that 
might be collected, we see that society in Eome at 
that time presented a picture at once repellent 
and most pathetic. It had developed enormous 
moral and spiritual needs, which no human 
wisdom nor power could satisfy. It was weary 
and heavy laden, and was sighing for rest. Yet 
the day was at hand. 

The Light of the World had come. 



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